Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Web 2.0 - Welcome to the New World

2008-10-25T21:04:00.007+05:30

Web 2.0 – Welcome to the New World

A very interesting series on the Discovery channel couple of weeks back prompted me to write this article. The show was called “Download – the story of the internet”. It was a remarkably made series on the history and progress of the internet.

Internet has become a part of our life similar to mobile and transport. Life would seem incomplete without internet. A substantial part of our time is spent on internet these days and it seems to be growing day-by-day. We are now in an age of Web 2.0. I’ll try and throw light on what it means from my perspective. Web 2.0 is a very vague term and there is no clear definition or meaning attached to it. Hence I take the liberty to put my own definition to it as well J

In the early days of internet, it was used to host websites and share information with the users. Typically people used to log on to a site, read the content, and log off. Then came emails and chat, and people started communicating with each other. Still the communication was restricted to between individuals.

Then Google revolutionized the internet and made it vastly assessable to the masses. It started motivating people to put up more websites and share more content. Still the communication on the internet was one way only.

I think the turning point was development of online applications that enabled people to post queries and get replies from multiple people. Often these people interacting were strangers to each and shared one thing in common – the domain or the topic of discussions. These online applications were called Forums. Suddenly the internet was opened to masses and provided a platform to create applications that enable people to interact with each other in the real sense. All boundaries were opened up and anyone was allowed to participate. You no longer needed a static website to provide you the information that you need. The information was getting updated real time and with more participation.

These applications that enable users to interact with each other, generate their own content and share it, view others content and give their feedback is the heart of what we call as Web 2.0.

In last 4 – 5 years lots of such applications have come up and have given the web a new meaning. The underlying technology of the internet has been the same since inception it’s just how people are using it has changed. Hence there is no real meaning of the term Web 2.0.

The applications that are popular in the Web 2.0 era are –

· Social networking sites such as Orkut, MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Second Life etc

· Blogging sites such as Blogspot, Wordpress, Typepad etc

· Photo Sharing sites such as Picasaweb, Flickr etc

· Video sharing sites such as Youtube, Google Video etc

· Wiki’s such as Wikipedia, WikiWikiWeb, Memory Alpha etc

· Social Bookmarking or tagging sites such as del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Digg, reddit etc

· File sharing sites such as Megaupload, File Factory, RapidShare etc

· E-commerce sites such as Amazon, E-bay, Alibaba etc

· Live casting sites such as Ustream, Justin.tv, Stickam etc

· Audio / Music sharing sites such as imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter

· Online game sites such as World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy etc

· Content aggregators like iGoogle, My Yahoo, Google Reader, Google News etc

This is just a partial list and there are thousands of these kinds that are flourishing over the internet.

The key thing to observe in all these websites and the popularity associated with them is that the user is at the centre of it. All of these sites are based on “user generated content” paradigm. The users log on to these sites, register themselves, write / upload share content, edit content, view content all by themselves. The users form groups based on their interests and liking. They generate content and they consume content amongst themselves. In a way these applications have enabled users to move part of their life on the web. And according to me this is what Web 2.0 is all about.

The popularity of these applications is only because they are user centric and they give the users the freedom to use it as per their liking. As Chad Hurley founder of You Tube rightly put it behind the success of You Tube that these days’ people like to see themselves or their friends.

Slowly we are shifting from a world where we had no choice but to read and view content published by select few people via TV, Movies, Books, Newspaper, Websites to a world where we create content, share it, and view it amongst ourselves.

Welcome to the new world of Web 2.0!

THE WORLD IS IN YOUR HANDS

2008-10-24T22:00:00.009+05:30

THE WORLD IS IN YOUR HANDS

I came across this on a post on a blog by Mosho. It lists down few of the simple things to follow and make it a habit and a part of our lifestyle which will contribute significantly in preserving our Global Ecosystem and reducing greenhouse gases and in turn global warming. I have added few more points to the list.

I personally think the problem of global warming can be most effectively solved only through individual contributions rather than leaving it to governments and organizations to take measures. We live in an age of very high consumption and this is what is contributing significantly to increase in greenhouse gases like CO2, methane etc. And not just that we are also contributing towards reduction in natural gases/ oil, food production, and water. All of these are prime constituent for life and all of them are depleting at a very high rate. If the trend continues the earth will run out of these in the next century and thereby endangering the lives of future generations to come. If we were to reduce our consumption and wastage by proactively taking steps individually we can control the balance and maintain the beautiful Global Ecosystem on earth.

What we can do at a micro level to make this world a better place:

1. Every time we fill petrol into our vehicles - opt for the higher grade fuel (like Power, Turbojet or Speed) as it is less subsidized than the regular variant. This will help the country reduce its burden on fuel subsidy. Additionally these types of fuel also reduce carbon emission in the vehicles.

2. Every time you walk out of a room after dark, forget not to switch off the light. It will reduce the power demand in the country and also help in the reduction in global warming.

3. When you are in a mood to donate anything, donate a CFL bulb to someone who can replace his regular tungsten bulb with the CFL. This will also reduce power demand, reduce his electricity bill and reduce global warming. Make sure you yourself use CFL bulbs in your home and office.

4. Never turn away from a tap with water running. Go, switch the tap off. The Chinese equated water with money and therefore thought that wasting water is losing money. I agree. I also think that water is a scarce commodity and a vital one too. Therefore there is wisdom in saving water. Don't let the tap water run while shaving. You can collect water in a bowl and shave. It saves a lot of water.

5. Try as much as possible to buy goods and consumables made in your local area, your state, your country and the rest of the world, in that order. The logic behind this is the longer the distance between the consumer and the manufacturer, the more the fuel that is consumed in the transportation, therefore larger the carbon print and associated problems. This is more so in the case of imported fruits and vegetables, because along with the fuel the goods require to be refrigerated. Now we know that refrigeration comes at an ecological cost. The higher the period of refrigeration, the higher the cost.

6. Perishable goods that have to come from really far-off places need to be preserved. Now, we know that preservation can be made possible only with the use of chemical preservatives and stabilizers. Therefore the hazards associated with these chemicals, both medical and ecological, are being bought by you at the time of purchase of these goods. A study in the UAE has suggested that childhood obesity and decrease in the age of onset of puberty is linked to the preservatives used to preserve meat coming from overseas.

7. Try to ride a cycle to work. If the local grocer or barber is not very far from where you live, walk the distance. Walking to any place is only a matter of habit. Shed that ego. Walk it.

8. When in a high-rise building and you want to go down, walk down the stairs. This will save the electricity needed to bring the lift up to your level and then go down to the ground floor.

9. Keep the computer on a non-screen saver mode. Switch the monitor off when you are not working and the computer is lying idle. Go for a flat screen over a CRT monitor if possible, it consumes far less energy.

Contributed by -

http://thoughtsovertea.blogspot.com/2008/10/world-is-in-your-hands.html

Few more additions -

10. When you are done charging your mobile or batteries or any electronic appliance, remove the plug from the socket coz it drains power even when you have removed the appliance.

11. Do not use unnecessary extra lighting in your home, office than what is necessary.

12. Use a two-wheeler, or public transport, or look for options of car pooling with friends / colleagues to travel to office rather than driving alone in a car.

13. Reduce visiting excessively to Cafes, Restaurants, malls, multiplexes, amusement parks etc. whenever you can. These places have a very high carbon footprint owing to their huge structure and ambience which requires a lot of power consumption in the form of lighting, air-conditioning, etc.

14. Avoid ordering huge amount of food and wasting it.

15. Do not waste drinking water. Fill only what you need.

16. Last but not the least, practice it yourself and at the same time remind others around you as often as you can. Become a strong advocate of a green and a clean world. Educate others, remind them often, and take action.

We consume way beyond what we need. And the irony is that a very small percentage of population comprising of people like us – “educated, well-to-do, with jobs and money” indulge in this over consumption. So it is us who are directly responsible for the disruption of the global ecosystem and endangering the lives of other majority of the population and the future generations.

Think about it.

GLECOSYS

The GLobal ECOSYStem

www.glecosys.com

Values

2008-10-12T23:11:00.004+05:30

Values –

I have always been fascinated and motivated by individuals and organizations exhibiting strong value system. Value means different things to different people. I will try and explain what it means to me and mention few of them who I think have successfully endured it.

Value for one should be measured on a vast time span… in our case maybe over a span of lifetime. It’s pretty easy to define values and stick to it in a short run but extremely difficult to sustain it over decades and life time. Value needs practice needs sustainability. Values are those that go beyond self, aim for larger goals, and sacrifice short term gains and pleasures through short-cuts. Values need great sacrifices to be made, endure prolonged hardships, perseverance and sustaining without giving up come no matter what. Value is making a promise and delivering on it, putting others first, aiming for the best, and self belief. Value is in innovation, setting new standards, changing the rules of the game, being competitive though fair.

Some of the individuals and organizations that have shown a great deal of value are Mahatma Gandhi, Warren Buffet, Tata Group (Ratan Tata), Google, and Infosys (Narayan Murthy). Of course there are many more of them. But here I will just cover in short what I admire the most of these individuals and companies –

Mahatma Gandhi –

I think his principles and teachings are universal and immortal. They are as much applicable in today’s world as they were in the past and will remain to be so forever. The path of non-violence is probably more relevant in today’s age of terrorism than it was in the past. His book “My experiments with Truth” gives a great insight on his thoughts and principles. He spent his whole life preaching and practicing non-violence and firmly believed in the same. Most of the today’s problems like Terrorism and Global Warming could be easily solved by following and practicing his teachings. Of course like any true value principle his teachings are very tough to endure. Through consistent self-restraint and non-violence he was able to successfully contribute to India’s freedom struggle from British rule. Given two options for gaining Indian Independence, through retaliating and fighting by means of violence and on the other hand through self-restraint and non-violence he chose the path of non-violence coz he believed – “an eye for an eye makes the world go blind”. He believed nothing would come out of violence and would only end in loss of innocent lives and hatred all around.

I personally believe similar to the struggle of independence the current issues in the world such as wars and terrorism, nuclear threats etc are very complex issues. Violence and terrorist acts from both sides just cascade the issue further and drive them far away from point of negotiations and peace. It’s very important for everyone involved to sit back and think of non-violence and peace as a path to chose to put an end to the escalating chain reaction of terrorist acts all around the world.

Some of Ganhiji’s quotes that I like are -

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”

“The earth has enough for man’s need but not for man’s greed.”

“An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.”

“A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word.”

Warren Buffet –

He is a strong proponent of value investing and a devoted student of Benjamin Graham. He is extremely disciplined about his investment and has made large sums of money not only for himself but for all his shareholders. He has consistently been amongst the top 5 richest people on the planet from decades. While the entire world is in turmoil currently over the financial credit crisis, he is one of the very few who is the least affected by it. His belief in value investing and his dedicated and disciplined approach does show results in such time. Though being a very close friend of Bill Gates, he has always stayed away from IT stocks coz he says he doesn’t quite understand this field to invest in it. A recent quote about him is that the US government should learn from him and follow his principles to avoid such financial disasters in the future because – “He is the man who knows how to make big money and more importantly how to keep it.” In spite of being one of the richest people on the planet, he lives a very simple life and is very down to earth. He is not only the greatest investor ever but also a great philanthropist and has announced to donate more than 80% of his wealth for social cause. Behavioral finance is a very complex topic and there is not greater teacher than Warren Buffet.

Some of his memorable quotes on investing and life are –

"If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweler."

"I think it's much easier to predict the relative strength that Coke will have in the soft drink world than Microsoft will in the software world," Buffett said. "That's not to knock Microsoft. If I had to bet on anyone, I'd bet on Microsoft. But I don't have to bet."

"The market is there only as a reference point to see if anybody is offering to do anything foolish. When we invest in stocks, we invest in businesses."

"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."

“Only when you combine sound intellectual framework with emotional discipline, you get a rational behavior”.

“Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.”

“Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”

“Our favorite holding period is forever.”

Tata Group (Ratan Tata)

Tata group is the first truly Multinational Company from India. It currently has diverse and successful business across all major geographies. Tata Group has operations in more than 85 countries across six continents and its companies export products and services to 80 nations. The Tata Group comprises 98 companies in seven business sectors, 27 of which are publicly listed. 65.8% of the ownership of Tata Group is held by the charitable trust of Tata. The sectors it has presence in are - Information systems and communications, Engineering, Materials, Services, Energy, Consumer products, and Chemicals. Companies which form a major part of the group include Tata Steel, Corus Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Tea, Titan Industries, Tata Power, Tata Communications and the Taj Hotels. Tata group turnover is now estimated to touch Rs 1.5 lakh crore. The man behind all this Ratan Tata is a shy man and rarely features in the society glossies.

Some of the key highlights of the Tata group companies are -

· Tata Steel is the world's 5th largest and India's largest steel company

· TCS is the largest IT Company in Asia

· Tata Motors is India's largest passenger automobile and commercial vehicle manufacturing company, it recently finalized a deal with Ford Motor Company to acquire their British Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) business

· Tata Power is one of the largest private sector power companies in India

· Tata Tea Limited is the world's second largest manufacturer of packaged tea and tea products. It also owns the Tetley brand of tea sold primarily in Europe

· Tata Communications, formerly known Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited or VSNL, is India's largest telecommunication company in international long distance, enterprise data and internet services

· Titan Industries is the world's sixth largest wrist watch manufacture

Tata Motors is soon coming up with their most innovative product the people car or the one lac car – Nano. When Rata Tata announced his plans to develop a car for Rs. 1 lac, he was ridiculed by other car makers including the global giants and they had termed his dream as impossible and foolish. Today after Tata almost on the verge of launching it there is rush amongst all global car manufacturers to replicate it. It is being termed as the most innovative product after Henry Ford’s Model T in the automobile history by the same global auto giants.

Quotes from Ratan Tata –

“A Promise is a Promise…”

- On launching the Tata Nano in the Auto Expo 2008 and keeping the cost within 1 lac in spite of rising raw material cost.

Google

1. Google is one of the most innovative companies currently in the world. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. They have so far lived up to their mission through sheer innovation, technology, and strong fundamental values. Listing Google’s facts would run into pages. Click here to know more about the company.

Google's index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising of billions of web pages. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second.

To know about their value system and philosophy read here - http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html

“Don’t be evil” is their fundamental value on which all their business decisions are made. The ten principles of Google are –

Focus on the user and all else will follow.

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.

3. Fast is better than slow.

4. Democracy on the web works.

5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

7. There's always more information out there.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

10. Great just isn't good enough.

Google main home page and its other sites in different languages are the most sought of web sites in the world. Google’s main revenues come from serving ads on their search site as well through affiliate sites. However they never defocus from their prime service that is to offer most relevant web search results and in the fastest time possible. Their home page which is probably the most valued real-estate on the web is clean without a single ad. The search results are plain text only that appear on the side bars with a separator and do not clutter the search results. The search results are unbiased and the most relevant based on their innovative page-ranking system. The ads too follow the same logic against conventional quick revenue generating methods.

I can go on and on writing about Google. I would recommend reading a book called “THE GOOGLE STORY” by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed to get deeper insight into the company.

LETTER FROM THE FOUNDERS (“AN OWNER’S MANUAL” FOR GOOGLE’S SHAREHOLDERS)

“A management team distracted by a series of short term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour. “

“We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner. For example, AdSense for content and Google News were both prototyped in “20% time.” Most risky projects fizzle, often teaching us something. Others succeed and become attractive businesses. “

Infosys - Narayan Murthy

Infosys is one of India's largest IT companies with over 90,000 professionals. It has nine development centers in India and over 30 offices worldwide. Its annual revenues for the fiscal year 2007-2008 exceeded US$4 billion with a market capitalization of over US$30 billion.

Infosys was founded in 1981 in Pune by N. R. Narayana Murthy and six others. N.Murthy started the company by borrowing Rs. 10,000 from his wife Sudha Murthy. In December 2005, Narayana Murthy was voted as the 7th most admired CEO/Chairman in the world in a global study conducted by Burson-Marsteller with the Economist Intelligence. The list included 14 others with distinguished names such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett.

I admire him for the way he has built such a strong company and the way they conduct themselves. Infosys is admired by all software professionals for their work and the way they treat their employees. Infosys has created a lot of wealth not only for its founders but also for all their stakeholders and their employees. Its one of the very few publicly listed companies who gives forecast guidance and sticks to it. Its founders and top management including CEOs are known to generously vacate their positions after a period of time to make way and give chance for upcoming talent.

Narayan Murthy himself is a very modest, straightforward, and a down to earth person. His wife Sudha Murthy has made equal sacrifices in making Infosys what it is today. Both Narayan Murthy and his wife Sudha Murthy are known for their philanthropic work as well.

Some of Narayan Murthy’s quotes are –

“Our assets walk out of the door each evening. We have to make sure that they come back the next morning.”

“Performance leads to recognition. Recognition brings respect. Respect enhances power. Humility and grace in one's moments of power enhances dignity of an organization,”

“The real power of money is the power to give it away.”

“In God we trust, everybody else bring data to the table.”

“Progress is often equal to the difference between mind and mindset.”

"Ships are safest in the harbor but they are not meant to be there. They have to sail long and hard and face stormy seas to reach the comfort of a desirable destination"

Boiling Frog Syndrome

2008-09-29T20:07:00.003+05:30

Boiling Frog Syndrome

We all go through different kinds of problems in our lives as an individual, as a society, as a country, and even as entire world. We constantly face certain problems and challenges in our lives. However some individuals manage to get out of them successfully whereas others find themselves devastated and broken by the end of it. Of course certain problems are completely out of our control and hit us suddenly without any warnings and which are impossible to guard against. But here I am talking of the kind of problems that we get ourselves into or are driven into and fail to realize the implications until very late. Few people, societies, and countries however do manage to pick up the warning signals pretty early and take preventive steps to avoid the consequences or to minimize the effect or in some cases even come out much stronger than before. These individuals have learnt the art of guarding themselves against the “Boiling Frog Syndrome”.

Some of the problems that are quite common are –

Ø Global Warming

Ø Population Explosion

Ø Depletion and Scarcity of Natural Resources ( Gas / Oil / Drinking Water)

Ø Shortage and Reduction in World Food Production

Ø Economic Downturns

Ø Corruption

Ø Quality Control in Projects

Ø Individual Debt / Financial Crisis

Ø Breakdown in Relationships

Ø Career Crisis

Ø Health Complications

Ø Addiction

In all of the above problems the warning signs are not clearly there to recognize in the early stages. Most of us fail to recognize them early enough. Sometimes even when we recognize them we fail to take effective action against them due to ignorance of the consequences. When these problems turn hazardous or life threatening then only we truly recognize their potential. By the time we realize it it’s very often too late. This human behavior is very common and is explained nicely through the metaphor known as the “Boiling Frog Syndrome”.

They say that if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will leap out right away to escape the danger. But, if you put a frog in a kettle that is filled with water that is cool and pleasant, and then you gradually heat the kettle until it starts boiling, the frog happily sits there and will not become aware of the threat until it is too late. The frog will eventually boil to death.

The frog's survival instincts are geared towards detecting sudden changes and so are with humans. This parable is often used to illustrate how humans have to be careful to watch slowly changing trends in their lifestyle, relationships, habits, finances, health, and career in addition to the environment, economy, etc. and not just the sudden changes. It’s a warning to keep us paying attention not just towards obvious threats but to more slowly developing ones.

In all the examples mentioned above the reasons and circumstances leading to trouble are initially very pleasant and have high probability of going unnoticed similar to the Frog enjoying the water in pleasant conditions. It’s only when things suddenly start going wrong and out of control that we often realize the trouble we are in. The changes are very slow and gradual for us to even notice them. But then that’s what we should be careful of and guard against. The reason being once the effects start taking place then its exponential and leaves us with very few options or solutions to fight them with.

One of the classic examples is that of Global Warming. With the whole world basking in the technology advancements and the industrialization we rarely pay attention to the slow but steady increase in the Greenhouse Gases in the atmosphere and the resulting Global Climate change. These kinds of problems require individuals to take proactive and conscious decisions to thwart off the long term disastrous consequences.

Visit Glecosys for more information on Global Warming.

Best Movies – My “Hall of Fame”

2008-09-19T21:41:00.008+05:30

Best Movies – My “Hall of Fame”

I am a diehard Movie Buff and a self-acclaimed Movie Critic too. I watch a lot of movies whenever I can. Though I must admit I am bit biased towards English Hollywood movies. The simple reason being they make movies on a wide variety of topics and are technically rich. I thought it would be a good idea to list down the movies that I loved watching over the years and which I think should go into my “Hall of Fame”. :-) I would highly recommend watching these movies. Of course other critics may not agree with my choice but then I understand this may not be the best list of all given the limitations – Most of these movies are from my generation and of course I haven’t seen all the movies released during this period. To add to that these are the movies that I could relate to and perceptions do differ. So anyways here it is –

*The list is not in any particular order.

All movies directed by John Woo – Hard Target, Broken Arrow, Face-Off, Mission Impossible – 2. Check them for the sheer style and the cool factor. John Travolta, Nicholas Cage, Tom Cruise never looked better. Flying pigeons, flying bullets, flying coats - too cool.

Leaving Las Vegas – Awesome acting by Nicholas Cage. The most tragic movie I ever saw.

Check out Godfather 1, 2, and 3 for brilliant direction by Francis Ford Coppola and acting by Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro. Its probably the greatest movie made so far. No one could recreate the feel the movie had.

Watch for Anthony Hopkins role as “Hannibal the Cannibal” in The Silence of the Lambs. Brilliant adaption from the novel.

Jodie Foster is another favorite in movies like The Silence of the Lambs, FlightPlan, Panic room, Contact.

Three Colors – Triology. I have only seen Red and am awestruck. Can’t wait to watch the other two White and Blue. Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski, it’s one of the most innovative movie making style I have ever seen.

Quentin Tarantino is another favorite movie director. Check out the path breaking and bold and stylish movies Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2, Reservoir Dogs. Check out Travolta and Uma Thurman’s chemistry in Pulp Fiction.

Uma Thurman is my all time favorite actress. I am mesmerized by her in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill.

John Travolta is the king of style in movies like Broken Arrow, Face-Off, and Pulp Fiction.

Clint Eastwood is the original cowboy. Some of his best works can be seen in “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”, Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby. My all time fav of Clint Eastwood is the romantic classic “The Bridges of Madison County” with Meryl Streep.

If I were to name my all time fav actor, it would be Jack Nicholson. Amazing stuff in Batman, A Few Good Men, As Good as It Gets, Anger Management, and The Departed. A must watch.

Check out Bourne Identity for some cool acting by Matt Damon.

Phone Booth by Joel Schumacher is probably the best and the most intelligent thriller I have ever seen.

Another actor that is closer to the Jack Nicholson league is Daniel Day-Lewis. Mind blowing stuff in The Gangs of New York and There will be Blood

Watch Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind and Gladiator and Denzel Washington in American Gangster.

Tom Cruise rocks in Jerry McGuire, Top Gun, Mission Impossible series, and A Few Good Men.

Action movies are clearly the forte of Arnold Schwarzenegger with Commando, Terminator series and True Lies. A close second spot is of course taken by Sylvester Stallone with the Rocky and Rambo series and Assassins also featuring the uber cool Antonio Banderas. Of course you can’t leave out Die Hard 1 starring Bruce Willis when you are talking of action movies.

These olden classics are a must watch - Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Sound of Music, and Gandhi.

Life is Beautiful will probably go down as the most beautiful film made on human emotions ever. A must must watch.

The Matrix Triology by the Wachowski Brothers is again a path breaking movie making style.

Watch XXX starring Vin Diesel for some cool action and rocking sound track.

I hate watching Horror movies coz they scare the shit out of me. However I did once manage to watch Ring 2 and regretted the decision for many nights thereafter. Though for horror freaks I would recommend it.

M. Night Shyamalan made the movie of his lifetime with The Sixth Sense. Though he could never recreate the same magic ever after.

The only director in Hollywood who comes up with universally appealing hit movies one after another and keeps getting better and better at it is Steven Spielberg - Jaws, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Indiana Jones series, Jurassic Park series, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, Munich are some of his best works that I have seen.

The actor who can carry movie on his own and with a stupendous track record is Tom Hanks. A must watch are Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, You've Got Mail, Cast Away, Road to Perdition, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal.

Fargo is a joy to watch thanks to Joel and Ethan Coen.

Leonardo DiCaprio is amazing versatile actor with the wide variety of roles he essays in drastically different movies such as Titanic, Gangs of New York, Catch Me If You Can, The Aviator, The Departed, Blood Diamond.

In the animation category (3D) the entire Shrek series is immensely enjoyable along with Ice Age.

Kevin Spacey gives his best in The American Beauty and The Usual Suspects.

Watch Pirates of the Caribbean for Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow.

Watch The Godfather, Scarface, Scent of a Woman, Heat, The Devil's Advocate to see why Al Pacino is considered one of the greatest actors in all of film history.

Watch Ocean’s Eleven for the cool script, direction by Steven Soderbergh, and the super cool George Clooney.

And finally a toast to all the beautiful, hot, cool looking ladies from Hollywood – watch Jodie Foster in any of her movies, Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Mask of Zorro, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, Helen Hunt in Twister, Kate Winslet in Titanic, Salma Hayek in Desperado, and of course Uma Thurman in Kill Bill :-)

Google Chrome - Review

2008-09-08T20:01:00.006+05:30

Google Chrome – New Web Browser launched by GOOGLE

Other than Apple there is another Company that I admire and love a lot. Yes, its Google. Ever since I have started using Google for web searches since the year 1998/99 I have always been fascinated by their products. I have been tracking the company progress very closely and have learnt a lot from them over the last decade.

In my other posts I will try to elaborate what I like about their search engine and some of my original thoughts of improving it as well J

But this one is specifically about their new product called Google Chrome. It is a web browser akin to Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari et al. It’s only natural for Google to have entered the space of building Web Browser. With this they have again challenged its arch rival Microsoft heads on by competing against Internet Explorer and expanding their dominance in Web Based space.

If you were to track the trends, it’s quite obvious that the computing world is moving more and more towards web and web based applications and services. Microsoft who operates primarily in desktop and serve r space is being pushed behind by Google who operates mainly in the web space. Google who already dominates the search engine space is not looking to strengthen their position and hence the launch of Google Chrome browser.

To start with Google Chrome is an open source project which means the source code is available for free and others can now build upon it. I won’t go into details about the technical features of Chrome but would just highlight some of the striking features and why I find this product interesting and think it has a great future.

· As always Google has come up with the most simplistic design. The way they put it is “On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff - the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.” Read more…

All the unnecessary tool bars for window bar, buttons, status etc are gone. What you have is simple, big window to display the content.
The status bar is gone and replaced by overlay bar that comes up when needed.
Most of the buttons that are rarely used go into dropdown side bar.
Feature to save application shortcuts on your desktop that directly launches your application on the web.
Every tab you're using is run independently in the browser, so if one app crashes it won't take anything else down. Remember how entire Internet Explorer crashes when any window crashes.
No intrusive download manager; you see your download's status at the bottom of your current window.

Of course you can read through the entire feature list from this link. The technical details are also presented in a very innovative format - comics strip by Google. Check it here. However the point is Google Chrome is as simple as it gets. Something which the Google and Apple have pioneered through their designs. Something that other companies including Microsoft are far behind.

Of course people / critics will continue to find fault with the browser and try to promote other products. But its logical and simple common sense – why couldn’t anyone else think of getting rid of the unnecessary, rarely used layers of toolbars and instead give the users more space to browse and view the content when the name itself suggests Web Browser? Well isn’t it a simple thing to accept… at least I think so. Good ideas and good products rarely fail… and that’s why Google Chrome is here to stay and grow.

Unlocking iPhone

2008-08-25T22:36:00.000+05:30

Unlocking iPhone –

I dint have the patience to wait for the iPhone to launch in India after being launched in the US almost a year back. So I had to ask my brother to get one for me from the US sometime back. He got a piece that was unlocked by some dealer in US since iPhone comes with pre-defined carrier providers (AT&T in US, and now Airtel, Vodaphone in India).

Though I am quite tech savvy, I was not much informed on the software details of iPhone and the its firmware version being linked to unlocking it. So one day in my excitement I updated my iPhone firmware through iTunes from 1.4 to 2.0. And wow, the next minute my iPhone was locked and rendered useless. I spent the next 3 days of my life struggling like crazy to unlock my iPhone. Through web links provided by my friends to some of the tutorials I read a lot on the fine workings of the iPhone software and the process to unlock it. In this process I think I have become quite a pro at it. The terms that may sound alien to most of the people are now part of my regular vocabulary :-) like Firmware, baseband, bootneuter, jailbreak, pwn, activate, restore, custom restore, device firmware update (DFU) etc. At the same time I have become quite acquainted with the various tools that help in unlocking like – WinPwn, Liberty, Zibri, and such.

Some of the links that you could refer to if you are interested are -

http://www.iclarified.com/

http://sleepers.net/news/

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

So if anyone is stuck with a locked iPhone and struggling to unlock it, you know whom to ask for help :-)

iPhone Review

2008-08-25T21:24:00.001+05:30

"iPhone" Review

I have always been an Apple fan. You don’t need to read a lot or go through technical specifications or listen to so called experts on technology to understand why Apple is the numero uno when it comes to designing electronic gadgets like Personal Computers, Music Players, and now Mobile Phones. All you need to do is experience their products for yourself to feel the difference. Chances are you won’t go back to any other device once you are hooked on to Apple. Their products are revolutionary and talk for themselves –

Mac PC and OS
iPod
iPhone

Apple changes the way people use computing device or listen to music or use mobile devices. There latest offering the uber-cool, iconic iPhone is yet another revolutionary product. I had the chance of getting my hands on one (though shipped in from US prior to its launch in India). The experience so far is out of this world. I fell in love with the phone and the features it provides. Its gonna change the way mobile devices are designed and used in the industry. One doesn’t feel the need to have a physical key pad attached to the phone any longer. And instead make use of the entire screen space for other useful purposes. The usability and design of the phone is amazing and as good as it can get. Some of the key features in the phone are –

The Operating System and its stability. It hasn’t crashed single time till date. And going by Apple’s record it’s no surprise.
The robust yet so sensitive touch screen and the scrolling features. It’s amazing the way the hardware is designed and backed by the software that helps achieve this path-breaking design.
The different pre-installed application from Apple. All the apps are so user friendly and so useful. There is not a single feature that is redundant, just-for-show kinds, or non user friendly. Imaging you clicking on the calculator and in the normal mode it’s a standard calculator. As soon as you turn the phone around (90 deg) and view it horizontally, the standard calculator turns into scientific one and fits neatly in the wide horizontal screen.
The safari browser which I think is damn cool and stable to browse the internet. With ample screen space it’s a pleasure browsing the net.
The Email feature is again very neat.
With Apple iPhone apps launched and integrated on the phone one can expect thousands of useful applications being developed specifically for iPhone throughout the world in the near future.
And not to mention the built in cool iPod as well.

Is there any reason to crib or ask for more? I can’t think of any…

Well only Apple can come up with such innovative stuff. Else it would have already been developed, isn’t it?

Global Climate Change - Glecosys initiative

2008-08-09T10:14:00.001+05:30

Guys -

I have been reading quite a lot about Global Climate Change, Global Warming, Greenhouse Effect, Carbon emission and such. I have realized that the problem is real and we all are responsible for it. Its high time everyone understands this problem in detail and takes measure to arrest the rising greenhouse gases (CO2) emission. If not done its highly probable that the next few generations would not be able to enjoy the kind of life we experience on this beautiful planet.

I would recommend everyone to take some time out and go through the article present on the link below -

http://unfccc.int/essential_background/feeling_the_heat/items/2918.php

As part of my company CrediPoint Solutions, we have started a new initiative by launching a site on Global Climate Change awareness called Glecosys (acronym for GLobal ECOSYStem). The site has lots of animations, courses, articles, and links on Global Climate Change developed by CrediPoint Solutions.

http://www.glecosys.com

Course on Global Climate Change:

Animation on Enhanced Greenhouse Effect:

Animation on Carbon Cycle:

Increase your understanding, take preventive steps, share knowledge, educate others, spread the word and become a responsible citizen of the planet.

Cheers!

Sandeep Khomne

Stock Recommendations - 18th March 2008

2008-03-18T17:26:00.000+05:30

Stock Recommendations - 18th March 2008

Hi -
As you all are aware I am an value investor and stock picking is one of my passions... Having studied a lot of companies and invested in them, here are few recommendations from my side.

With the stock market crash in past 2 months, I thought it would be a great idea to list the stocks that I would pick if I were to select 20 companies and had a kitty of 2 lacs. Unfortunately, as of now I do not have that much cash so all I can do is at least recommend it to others :-)

There is of course immenient chance of the Stock market going further down. So I would rather recommend buying these stocks more if they were to go down further in the same proportion as the current allocation mentioned below. And it goes without saying, I would recommend to hold these stocks for long term (at least 2 years and more) and not for short term trading / gains.

As of today the stock index is at Sensex: 14,833.46 / Nift: 4533.00

It will be a good idea to track this investment periodically and then compare it with the index gains...

Here is the list of 20 companies that I recommend -

1 EXIDE INDUSTRIES LTD
2 AMARA RAJA BATTERIES LTD
3 STATE BANK OF INDIA
4 YES BANK LTD.
5 OMAXE LIMITED
6 PRAJ INDUSTRIES LTD
7 UNITED BREWERIES LTD
8 BARTRONICS INDIA LTD
9 RELIANCE COMMUNICATIONS LTD
10 GLODYNE TECHNOSERVE LIMITED
11 DECCAN AVIATION LTD
12 PATEL ENGINEERING CO
13 RAJESH EXPORTS
14 WANBURY LIMITED
15 INFRASTRUCTURE DEV FIN CO LTD
16 AXIS BANK LIMITED
17 HIMACHAL FUTURISTICS COMM
18 INFOSYS
19 BHEL
20 LARSEN & TOUBRO

Do share comments if any.

2008-03-17T20:48:00.000+05:30

Do’s, Don’ts, and Best Practices on Email Communication

Through my experience working in an IT firm for over 8 years as part of production team, I have tried to list down the Do's, Don'ts, and Best Practices on email communication. This will be helpful typically in a service industry - prodcution environment where emails is primary and important mode of communication. Hope this is helpful.

1) Meaningful subject line
2) Writing message in subject line
3) HTML / Plain Text Format
4) Insert Links via Hyperlink feature
5) Signatures
6) Copy to feature
7) Attachments
8) Font color, size, background
9) Classified folders
10) Message rules
11) Email Content
12) Other Features

1) Meaningful subject line

· Write meaningful subject lines which are relevant to the topic of conversation. Do not write incomplete subject such as – Hi, hey, update, queries, help needed, files, path, tasks etc

· For project specific emails it is better to start the subject line with the project / client name followed by the topic. E.g. Avion Concepts – art design queriesRollXP DR – unit 3 files for uploadPST BRS – module 3 storyboard etc

· Adding the project name helps in setting the messages rules to divert the emails into specific folders for the particular project. Very often people usually work on multiple projects hence the message rules cannot be applied to a person. See classified folders and message rules for more details.

· There is another advantage of writing meaningful subject lines; it helps in easily searching a particular email when needed. For e.g. a lot of time is wasted if the subject lines are incomplete or misleading and even worse if it’s missing.

· Never send emails with missing subject line. If in case you accidentally send out one without a subject, resend the mail again with proper subject and a short apology for missing out. The reason being emails without subjects are very difficult to trace for the recipients in their mailbox.

· Effective subject lines should ideally contain words most relevant to the email contents and starting with the word that the recipient will most likely type while searching for that email, when they sort their emails by subject.

2) Writing message in subject line

· Never write the entire message in the subject and nothing in the body of the email. Subject line is meant for subject line and body for body text, period. E.g. Subject: please check in the module 3 files in the VSS and come up for tea…
Not only are you misusing the features of the email but sometime it also shows disregard towards the recipients. The subject line clutters with lot of text and the user has to open the email to read the entire text. As against if the message is written in the body text it can be read within the preview pane itself.

· This also makes the email difficult to trace later on.

3) HTML / Plain Text Format

· Set the email format to ‘HTML” in the Tools>Options>Mail Format> settings. There are 3 options:
o HTML
o Plain Text
o Rich Text

· The HTML format is usually preferred over plain text since it provides lot of additional features for formatting. You can use all the text formatting options that are usually available in MS Word such as fonts, Colors, Hyperlink, alignment etc.

· If you receive email in HTML format and your settings are set for Plain text then on replying the formatting of the original email is lost.

· Except for smaller email size, there seems to be no other advantage of using plain text over HTML. However, with the current bandwidths available, the slight increase in email size compensates for the enormous facilities available in HTML format.

4) Insert Links via Hyperlink feature

· Always use the ‘Insert Hyperlink’ option whenever you want to send some link via email.

· The hyperlink feature ensures the link does not break if it exceeds the available line width.

· There have been many instances where in this feature was not used and links were broken and the client responding with ‘Link not working’ feedback.

· Again you need to have the email format set to ‘HTML’ to avail this facility.

5) Signatures

· Always use signatures in official mails. It gives a professional touch to the email.

· There are various types of signatures and the use of appropriate signature style depends on various factors such as:
o Your designation and job profile
§ People in managerial positions often need to have the company logo, company address, Websites, Email IDs, and phone/fax numbers listed in the signature.
§ The ones in senior management and finance / legal department who send out confidential emails may need to include disclaimer in the signature.
o The number of people you interact with regularly
§ For Sales / Senior Management people it is important to have a detailed and elaborate signature since they interact with new people / clients on a regular basis.
§ For a Lead or an LP who is working on the same project and interacts with the same set of people regularly throughout the lifecycle of the project need not have an elaborate signature prefixed with the email every time.
o The people whom you interact with regularly
§ For the juniors who may need to interact very often only with their peers and seniors within the company may exclude the details such as logo, phone numbers, address, disclaimer etc

· The style of signatures depends on individual taste. The one shown below is an example for generic usage having certain advantages

o The signature is horizontal as against vertical. This consumes less space and can be read at one go. One usually reads the mails in the preview pane. If the signatures are vertical and long then it adds scrollbar even when the messages are short. Very often the tendency is to scroll till the end even if it’s just a signature. For the people who receive mails in hundreds within a day this adds up to the task of reading emails.

o Very often only the name part is of prime importance in the signature. Hence the name is colored and is in bold. The recipient will require the remaining information very rarely. Hence they are colored grey and use a smaller font.

o The phone numbers are needed only once in a while, therefore they are in smallest font.

o The idea is that the signature and its content should not distract the reader from the text message of the email which is of primary importance.

o The line separators help in easily distinguishing and separating the signature from the body text.

· Use different signatures for replies. Usually the signatures associated with reply emails are short and only include the name. The reason being if you have received an email, chances are you already know the sender and are most likely to have interacted with them. So the information present in the new email signature might be redundant out here. You can always manually insert your new email signature, when needed.

· As far as possible try and avoid adding a quotation to a signature in official emails. The reason being the quotations that you choose is of personal preference and chances are it may not be inline with the preferences of the recipient. There is a possibility to create a particular image of the person / or judge a person based on the quote that one uses. Ideally you would not like to give out any perceived image through this means.
* For personal emails that you send out to friends / family, of course you can use quotations since they know you very well.

6) Copy to feature:

· In the ‘To’ field enter the emails IDs of the people to whom the email is directly addressed to in the content.

· Enter the emails IDs in the ‘Cc’ field of the people who needs to be kept in loop but you are not expecting them to respond or take actions on the contents of the email. Typically in an email addressed to a client by a Project Lead will usually have the direct stakeholders addressed in the ‘To’ field and the seniors at both sides in the ‘Cc’ field.

· If it’s an important email, you may want to address it to your self as well. There are two advantages for this:

o You receive a copy immediately and you can go through the contents once again to validate it. (Of course you can always go to your sent items and check it from there. However, you will need to build that discipline in this case to go and check them from sent items every time)

o The email resides in your inbox and can be retrieved easily when needed. Also it stays there along with the related emails on the same topic which helps while going through the entire chain of past emails on a particular topic.

7) Attachments

· Check the size of the attachments before sending emails. Usually there are restrictions to size limits defined by System Departments both in our company as well as at the recipient end. Attachments below 2 MB are usually safe to send. If a need arises to send across larger files, it’s always a better option to upload the files on FTP and send out the FTP details to the client.

· Avoid sending executable files as attachments. Most of the emails block these file types for security reasons e.g. .exe, .dll etc. Instead zip them and send it or upload them on ftp.

· Always zip the files before sending them as attachments. A zip file reduces the size considerably and is also a convenient method to send, receive and retrieve at one place.

8) Font color, size, background

· Use standard formats for official emails. Avoid using offbeat font styles, font colors and other options. The widely used formats are:

o 10 pt. Arial – While composing new messages
o 10 pt. Arial – While replying and forwarding

· Avoid using backgrounds for official emails. They make the text unreadable in cases of choosing wrong combination of font, color and background and it also increase the email size.

9) Classified folders

· Create separate folders for different types of emails. This helps a lot in effectively managing your emails in outlook. Some of the typical folders that you can have are
o Projects
o Proposals
o Personal
o HRD
o System
o Committees
o Senior Management etc

· Within the projects folder you can have separate folders for each project.

10) Message rules

· You can apply message rules to automatically divert the emails to respective folders when they arrive. You can apply message rules for people, text in subject line / body, distribution list etc. See help in outlook for more details.

11) Email Content

· Always address the email to the person/s to whom you are sending. Do not start with the message directly. E.g. Hi xyz, Hello xyz, Dear xyz, Hi All, Greetings, etc

· For official emails to clients, use introduction as far as possible. E.g. How are you doing? Hope you are doing well… I would like to update you on the project status and the deliverables for this week… Thank you for you confirmation on our assumptions… etcThe emails should always have a beginning, main content, and an ending. Do not start with the main content directly.

· The emails should have an ending where you can summarize the content of the email, thank the client, express interest in hearing back from the client etcE.g. As a team we are very excited with this initiative and look forward to partnering with you in this effort…We look forward to hear back from you soon… etc

· In the content of the emails try and use bulleted points or numbered list wherever applicable instead of writing long paragraphs. Listed and point wise entries are easy to follow and objective in nature. Most of the official communications do require this kind of approach.

· Turn on the ‘spell check before sending email’ option. Make sure there are no grammatical and spelling errors. Go through the email once again before sending it. Some of the words pass the spell check but may not be the ones that we intend to write. E.g. bare instead of bear, their instead of there etc. These errors can sometimes result in miscommunication and problems.

· Get acquainted with different abbreviations used in emails such as:
EOD – End Of Day
FYI – For Your Information
FYI&A – For You Information & Action
PFA – Please Find Attached
ASAP – As Soon As Possible
viz. - namely
et al. – and others etc

· Do not use slang or shortcuts in official emails such as u, ur, bcoz, n, gr8 etc.

· Do not use bold lettered words / sentences (in CAPS) in the email. Also do not highlight statements in Red. These can be interpreted as you ‘Shouting’ at the recipient. As far as possible avoid using this.

12) Other Features

· Use emails for all communications. Especially after a call and meetings use it to note and confirm the minutes. This way there is always a written confirmation of the information exchanged.

· If you need some information or action to be done which is super urgent or critical, follow up with a call or meet the person after sending an email. Do not expect an immediate receipt or acknowledgement of emails from anyone. There could be ‘n’ number of reasons for the person not acknowledging or acting on your email.

· Outlook allows assigning priorities to the emails. Assign the importance: high priority, only to important emails and do not overuse / misuse this feature.

· Outlook allows setting read receipt to the emails that you send out. This feature should be used only in critical situations where you would really like to get a read receipt. Most of the times it is frustrating for the recipients to click on the read receipt message box every time they view emails. Think of the inconvenience caused to the people who receive emails in access of 100 per day.

· Outlook allows an extremely useful feature called ‘Follow Up’. When you click on the follow up flag the email shows up in the follow up folder. For emails that you wish to reply or take a follow up action (as the name suggests) but at a later stage, should be flagged to move them to the follow up folder. This way you know exactly the emails that you are yet to respond to. Once the action is taken, you can clear the flag and the email is emptied from this folder.

· Message Alerts, pop-ups, and Email Notification – The use of this feature depends on the job profile. If you are an implementer and need to focus and concentrate on the work at hand, then the email notifications may cause a distraction in work. However, for Managers who mostly need to work through emails for sending and getting information, the pop-up notifications and tray bar icons are useful.

· Message Recall – If you send out an email and wish to recall it for any reason, you can try using the option ‘Recall Message’ from the Action > Recall this message setting in the sent email. However there is no guarantee that this feature will work, still its worth giving a try in extreme circumstances.

~ By Sandeep Khomne

Part 5 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

2008-03-17T20:11:00.000+05:30

Part 5 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....
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Warren Buffett has said, “Only when you combine sound intellectual framework with emotional discipline, you get a rational behavior”.
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Santayana said, “Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it”
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“In the short run, stock market is a voting machine and in the long run it is a weighing machine”.Ben Graham’s immortal words in ‘The Intelligent Investor’
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John Kenneth Galbraith’s “There are 2 types of predictors: those who can’t predict and those who don’t know they can’t predict.”
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"The potential profit to be taken into account is not the maximum figure which might conceivably be reached in the market, but merely the highest figure which the operator is likely to wait for before he closes his position. Once a given profit is taken, the additional profit which might have been realized becomes of merely academic interest"
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“Extrapolation may give you the ability to see what’s coming down the street but not what is coming around the corner”—Henry Kaufman
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“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”Albert Einstein
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Peter Lynch, a very well-known and successful fundamental analyst, once commented, "Charts are great for predicting the past."
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Practicality rules our perceptions.
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“There are two types of people in the world, my young friend. One type is people-oriented. When they make conversation,it is about people—what people are doing, what someonesaid, how someone feels. The other group is idea-oriented. When they make conversation, they talk about ideas and concepts and objects.”
Scott Adam - God's Debris
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It's a self preservation thing, you see
- Dlg from the movie 'Love Actually'
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The earth has enough for man’s need but not for man’s greed.
- Mahatma Gandhi
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An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.
- Mahatma Gandhi
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Every morning in Africa, when the Sun rises, a deer awakens, knowing, it has to outrun the fastest Lion, OR, be hunted to death....
Every morning in Africa, when the Sun rises, a Lion awakens, knowing, it has to outrun the slowest deer, OR, be starved to death....
It does not matter whether you are a deer or Lion, when the Sun rises,Better be running at your best.
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"Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable." - Mark Twain
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To gain knowledge, add something every day;to gain wisdom, remove something every day.- Lao Tzu
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Nishkulanand sings: 'Renunciation of objects, without the renunciation of desires, is short-lived, however hard you may try.'
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'Only he Who is smitten with the arrows of love. Knows its power.'
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A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word.- Mahatma Gandhi
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Tolstoy said that the Eiffel Tower was a monument of man's folly, not of his wisdom. Tobacco, he argued, was the worst of all intoxicants, inasmuch as a man addicted to it was tempted to commit crimes which a drunkard never dared to do; liquor made a man mad, but tobacco clouded his intellect and made him build castles in the air. The Eiffel Tower was one of the creations of a man under such influence. There is no art about the Eiffel Tower. In no way can it be said to have contributed to the real beauty of the Exhibition. Men flocked to see it and ascended it as it was a novelty and of unique dimensions. It was the toy of the Exhibition. So long as we are children we are attracted by toys, and the Tower was a good demonstration of the fact that we are all children attracted by trinkets. That may be claimed to be the purpose served by the Eiffel Tower.
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"The mind must always remain in the state of present."
B.K.S. Iyenger
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Do not confuse activity with Productivity.
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"Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room." - Blaise Pascal
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Economics 101: When there are no barriers to entry, prices fall to equilibrium.
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Dayton goes on to enumerate what he sees as the iPhone’s other shortcomings: “No removable battery. No removable memory. No GPS,” he says. “It has a bigger screen, so watching a movie on it will be better—but with no removable battery, you’re not really going to want to do that and make phone calls. So you’ve got the houseboat problem: It’s neither a house nor a boat, it’s both, and it’s not particularly great at either.”
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Being rich is just a function of how much you earn. But being wealthy is a function of how well you manage your money.
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A customer is the most important visitor to our premises.He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him.He is not an interruption on our work. He is the purpose of it.He is not an outsider on our business. He is a part of it.We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.
Mahatma Gandhi
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"Since we started the project four years back, there has been a steep increase in input cost, but a promise is a promise,"
~ Tata Group chief Ratan Tata said after displaying his dream project (Tata Nano at Rs. 1 Lac) at the ninth Auto Expo in Delhi on 10th Jan 2008.
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"Pharma companies don't care about fighting diseases that primarily affect the poor because the poor can't afford to buy their products. " – Inspired by the Global Forum for Health Research.
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Part 4 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

2006-05-01T14:55:00.000+05:30

Part 4 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

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From 'To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee'

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it
~ Atticus Finch

I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird. Well, I reckon because mockingbirds don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat people's gardens, don't nest in the corncrib, they don't do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.
~ Atticus Finch

"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."
~ Atticus

“Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him”
~ Atticus

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Memorable Quotes from
As Good as It Gets

Melvin Udall : I've got a really great compliment for you, and its true.
Carol Connelly : I'm so afraid you're about to say something awful.
Melvin Udall : Don't be pessimistic, it's not your style. Anyway, here goes: I've got this, what, ailment. Now, my doctor, this shrink I used to go to all the time, says that in fifty to sixty percent of cases, a pill really helps. I HATE pills, hate them. I'm using the word "hate" about pills. Anyway, my compliment to you is the night after you came over and said that you would never... well, you were there, you know what you said. Anyway, the very next morning, I started taking the pills.
Carol Connelly : I don't quite get how that's a compliment for me.
Melvin Udall : You make me want to be a better man.

Melvin Udall : I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you're the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do, and how you are with Spencer, "Spence," and in every single thought that you have, and how you say what you mean, and how you almost always mean something that's all about being straight and good. I think most people miss that about you, and I watch them, wondering how they can watch you bring their food, and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it makes me feel good, about me.

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Comfort and pleasure are closely related. Pleasure is the reward we receive for scratching a biological itch. Whereas comfort is simply the feeling of not having any itches in need of a damn good scratching.

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As the ancient chinese proverb states:

To be happy for a day, get drunk.

To be happy for a week get a pig (i.e. become wealthy)

To be happy for a year, get married.

But to be happy for life, become a gardener.

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The Unabomber Manifesto:

"In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one's physical needs. It is enough to go through a training program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence, and most of all, simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society takes care of one from cradle to grave"

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Like William Blake said, all things in moderation, including moderation.

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Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
- The Bible

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The Speed-of-Light Limit
Neither matter nor energy can travel through space faster
than the speed of light.

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The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other. -Marya Mannes, writer (1904-1990)

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"Quite often, people who mean well, will inquire of me whether I ask myself, in the face of my disease, `Why me?' I never do. If I ask `Why me?', as I am assaulted by heart disease and AIDS, I must ask `Why me?' about my blessings and my right to enjoy them. ... If I don't ask `Why me?' after my victories, I cannot ask `Why me?' after my setbacks and disasters."

- Arthur Ashe (Tennis champion on being diagnosed with AIDS)

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Fate determines who comes into our lives.... heart determines who stays.

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Gambling is the worst form of addiction, because there is a limit to how much coke or heroin you can put into yourself but there is no limit to how much money you can piss away in a casino. The same place that takes your money on average ten cents a hand at the $5 table will happily arrange to take it $100 a hand at a private, ten thousand dollar minimum table opened just for you.

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Casinos "work" (in the sense that they are effective tools for separating customers from their money) by exploiting two universal human misperceptions. The first of these is a tendency to perceive patterns in randomness. As Knuth wrote with regard to random number generators, if your RNG can't pump out a string of 20 zeroes then it really isn't random. That is a perfectly valid result which must happen just as often as any other arbitrary string of 20 results. But when it happens, we don't think "hmmm, that is a perfectly valid if unusual result." We think the game is fixed or biased, and if we're gambling we might smirk and place a bet.

The second misperception has to do with the house edge. It seems so reasonable, just a few percent tax to pay the dealer and build the casino. But most of us think of that percentage with regard to the drop rather than action. The typical 25-cent slot or $5 blackjack player thinks of the $100 he's bought in for, not of the thousands upon thousands of dollars in individual bets he can make before losing that stake. The exponential nature of the math turns that tiny percentage into an all-devouring black hole, which can eat the world a nibble at a time.

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Thomas Jefferson

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Do more than try...STRIVE , Do more than believe...TRUST.

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Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist
(1883-1931)

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And none will hear the postman's knock / Without a quickening of the heart.
/ For who can bear to feel himself forgotten? -W.H. Auden, poet (1907-1973)

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There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience. -French proverb

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When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. -Alexander Graham Bell, inventor (1847-1922)

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I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body.
Then I realized who was telling me this. -Emo Phillips, comedian, actor
(1956- )

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Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr., writer

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There are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth. -Chinese proverb

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The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
Saint Augustine

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When you row another person across the river, you get there yourself.

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MAVEN:

The word Maven comes from the Yiddish and it means one who accumulates knowledge.

Generally, an early adopter or individual who is particularly "invested in understanding, knowing about and seeking out new knowledge about a particular field, product or discipline. Mavens are valuable in the replication strategy of a meme since they generally become known as the trusted token in an environment.

Mavens tend to exhibit outlier behavior. On a bar of Ivory Soap, the phone number listed that is to be called in the event of questions is a Maven trap designed to isolate Mavens for Soap.

Gladwell M. (January 2002): The Tipping Point, (Back Bay Books).

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Investing ( n-vsting)

The act of committing money or capital to an endeavor with the expectation of obtaining an additional income or profit.

It's actually pretty simple: investing means putting your money to work for you--actually, it's a different way to think about how to make money. Growing up, most of us were taught that you can earn an income only by getting a job and working. And so that's what most of us do. There's one big problem with this: if you want more money, you have to work more hours. But there is a limit to how many hours a day we can work--not to mention the fact that having a bunch of money is no fun if we don't have the leisure time to enjoy it.

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Peter Lynch, one of the greatest investors of all time, has said that the "key organ for investing is the stomach, not the brain." In other words, you need to know how much volatility you can stand to see in your investments. Figuring this out for yourself is far from an exact science; but there is some truth to an old investing maxim: you've taken on too much risk when you can't sleep at night because you are worrying about your investments.

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"Knowledge is the only resource on earth that multiplies when shared."

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"If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweler." - Warren E. Buffett

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"I think it's much easier to predict the relative strength that Coke will have in the soft drink world than Microsoft will in the software world," Buffett said. "That's not to knock Microsoft. If I had to bet on anyone, I'd bet on Microsoft. But I don't have to bet."

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"In the short term the market is a popularity contest; in the long term it is a weighing machine."

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"Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it." Peter Lynch

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"If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn't be in stocks." John (Jack) Bogle

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"[O]ur mandate is to find the 200 best companies in the world and invest in them, and find the 200 worst companies in the world and go short on them. If the 200 best don't do better than the 200 worst, you probably should get in another business."
Julian Robertson

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"In the 1950s and 1960s, the heroes were the long-term investors; today the heroes are the wise guys."
"our fund's risk factor can, at least in theory, vary from plus 200% to minus 200%."
Michael Steinhardt

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"It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong."
George Soros

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"The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell."
"the only investors who shouldn't diversify are those who are right 100% of the time."
John Templeton

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Compound interest is "the greatest mathematical discovery of all time.
Albert Einstein

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old stock market saying:

Bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs just get slaughtered!

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Economics may appear to be the study of complicated tables and charts, statistics
and numbers, but, more specifically, it is the study of what constitutes rational
human behavior in the endeavor to fulfill needs and wants.

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A management team distracted by a series of short term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour.

We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner. For example, AdSense for content and Google News were both prototyped in “20% time.” Most risky projects fizzle, often teaching us something. Others succeed and become attractive businesses.

LETTER FROM THE FOUNDERS

“AN OWNER’S MANUAL” FOR GOOGLE’S SHAREHOLDERS1

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"The market is there only as a reference point to see if anybody is offering to do anything foolish. When we invest in stocks, we invest in businesses."
- Warren Buffet

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"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."
- Warren Buffet

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According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the Zahir comes from the Islamic tradition and probably arose in the eighteenth century. In Arabic "zahir" means "visible", "present", "incapable of going unnoticed". It can refer to an object or a person, and that object or person gradually takes over our every thought, until we are unable to think of anything else. This could be considered a state of holiness or a state of madness.

- Paulo Coehlo in 'Zahir'

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“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”

~ Mahatma Gandhi

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“We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate.
The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled
catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have
their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of
the wind?....... We make our own destiny.”
Swami Vivekananda

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“Heart has its reasons, that reasons don’t understand” – Pascal.

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My Portfolio Analysis - as on 18th Apr 2006

2006-04-18T19:35:00.000+05:30

Below is my portfolio analysis for stock investment. I have started investing in stocks since 1st october 2005. Most of the stocks I have invested in just recently. I shall be periodically updating this and posting it. Also I will start posting the reasoning behind picking these particular stocks.

Here is the list of companies I have invested in till date:

Mahindra and Mahindra - M & M
ICICI Bank
Yes Bank
Hindustan Construction Corporation - HCC
Larsen and Turbo - L&T
ITC
Royal Orchid
Aftek Infosys
Infosys
Paradyne Infotech
Satyam
Visesh Infotechnics
Wipro
Hindalco
Bartronics
Patel Engineering
Piramyd Retail
Rajesh Exports
Western Hatcheries - Venkys
Bharti Tele Ventures
Reliance Communication Ventures
Celebrity Fashions
Kewal Ketan Clothings
Provogue
ABG Shipyard

Investment and Finance - Introduction

2006-04-14T17:59:00.000+05:30

Ok here is some information about my interest in the field of Investment and Fianance... In my future posts I'll be writing more about this. To start with here is some background...

Summary of basic knowledge in Investment and Finance field till date:

1. Interested in the working of Global economy
2. Investment – Stocks, Real Estate, Commodity
3. Enjoyed reading few books on Investment
a. Rich Dad Poor Dad
b. Warren Buffet Way
c. One up on Wall street – Peter Lynch
d. The Intelligent Investor – Benjamin Graham
e. Read a lot of articles on Investment on web (all articles on Investopedia, ICICI Direct, Economic Times, etc)
4. Very impressed by Buffet ideology of Value and Long Term Investing which in turn is based on Benjamin Grahams’
5. Understand basics of Oil Prices, Interest Rates, Inflation and the impact on global economy and markets
6. Interested in studying and exploring Indian market and companies
7. Regularly track Indian Stock Market, News on NDTV Profit, CNBC, Economic Times news paper, Investment magazines
8. Understand the functioning of business and the parameters involved like Revenues, Expenses, P&L, EBIDTA, Debt, Net Profits etc
9. Understand the factors affecting business like Demand / Supply, Competition, Value addition, Management principles, Mission and Values, Employee Satisfaction, Productivity, Economic conditions, GDP etc
10. Understand software industry and software products in depth
11. Overall interested in keeping track of world news and reading on various topics

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

2006-04-12T17:49:00.000+05:30

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

“Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes, and the second law of thermodynamics.”

‘The Second Law of Thermodynamics’ also known as ‘Entropy’ or ‘Arrow of Time’ is perhaps the biggest, most powerful, most general idea in all of science. Why paper, trees, coal, gas and all things like them burn (and why people "should" spontaneously catch fire in air), why sand and dry ice even in pure oxygen can't ever burn, why the sun will eventually cool down, why iron rusts (but not why it rusts faster nearer the ocean), why there are hurricanes or any weather at all on earth, what makes things break, why houses get torn apart in tornadoes or explosions, and perhaps the most important thing for us - why everything living tends to die.

Who cares about the second law of thermodynamics?
Well, anyone who wonders how the material world, our world of energy and matter, works.

Look at the direction that energy flows in any happening or process or event. That is the first step to understanding what the second law of thermodynamics is and what it applies to. “Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out.”

The second law is a straightforward law of physics with the consequence that, in a closed system, you can't finish any real physical process with as much useful energy as you had to start with — some is always wasted. This means that a perpetual motion machine is impossible. The second law was formulated after nineteenth century engineers noticed that heat couldn’t pass from a colder body to a warmer body by itself.

The perfect illustration is: A hot frying pan cools down when it is taken off the kitchen stove. Its thermal energy ("heat") flows out to the cooler room air. The opposite never happens.
A glass falls down from the top of a table and breaks into pieces. The opposite never happens.
Air in a high-pressure tyre shoots out from even a small hole in its side to the lower pressure atmosphere. The opposite never happens.

The big deal is that all types of energy spread out like the energy in that hot pan does (unless somehow they're hindered from doing so) They don't tend to stay concentrated in a small space; they flow toward becoming dispersed if they can -- like electricity in a battery or a power line or lightning, wind from a high pressure weather system or air compressed in a tire, all heated objects, loud sounds, water or boulders that are high up on a mountain, your car's kinetic energy when you take your foot off the gas. All these different kinds of energy spread out if there's a way they can do.

Run that Titanic movie as the ship hits the iceberg. See those steel plates ripped open and the ship begin to sink. Realistic, right? Can you imagine a real happening in which the reverse occurs? A sinking ship whose steel side heals up as it comes up out of the water and floats? Ridiculous! Too stupid to think about. But why is it stupid? Because it is so improbable from our experience. Only a movie run backward would show that kind of unrealistic fantasy. The second law isn't some weird scientific idea. It fits with everything common happening that we know.

A swimmer doesn't come shooting up out of the water to the diving board, rocks in a valley don't suddenly roll up a mountain, outside air doesn't rush into a flat tire, batteries don't get charged by sitting around. Those events all would have energy spontaneously become more concentrated, the opposite of energy spreading out.

The second law points the direction of how we feel time goes.

Our psychological sense of time is based on the second law.
It summarizes what we have seen, what we have experienced, what we think will happen.

Hence, it’s also known as the Arrow of Time.

Entropy just measures the spontaneous dispersal of energy: how much energy is spread out in a process, or how widely spread out it becomes – as a function of temperature.
The second law always predicts increase in dispersed energy or entropy in the universe. We humans tend to think of concentrated energy as ‘order’ and dispersed energy as ‘disorder’. Inflated tyre – order, Punctured tyre – disorder; A glass sitting on top of table – order, broken glass on ground – disorder. Thus, we can state that there is always an tendency towards increase of disorder in the universe.

If I hold a small rock in my fingers so it is ready to fall, it has potential energy concentrated in it because it is up above the ground. If the second law is so great and powerful, why doesn't the energy that has been concentrated in the rock spread out? Obviously, it can't do that because my fingers are "bonding" to it, keeping it from falling. The second law isn't violated. That rock tends to fall and diffuse its energy to the air and to the ground as it hits -- and it will do so spontaneously by itself, without any help -- the second I open my fingers and "unbond" the rock.

Important: It is a tendency rather than a prediction of what will happen right away.

Energies can be blocked in systems over a time spanning from few microseconds to few hours to few years to millions of years or even more. However, the energies will spread out sometime or the later for sure.

Blockage of the second law is absolutely necessary for us to be alive and happy. Not one of the complex chemical substances in our body and few in the things we enjoy would exist for a microsecond if the second law wasn't obstructed. Its tendency is never eliminated but fortunately for us, there are a huge number of compounds in which it is blocked for our lifetimes and even far longer.

The second law is the Greatest Good and the Biggest Bad to us:

The GOOD: Because of the second law -- the direction of energy flow -- life is possible.

We can take in concentrated energy in the form of oxygen plus food and use some of that energy unconsciously to synthesize "uphill" complex biochemicals and to run our bodies, consciously for mental and physical labor, excreting diffused energy as body heat and less concentrated energy substances.
We can use concentrated energy fuels (e.g., gasoline/coal, plus oxygen) to gather all kinds of materials from all parts of the world and, regardless of how much energy it takes, arrange them in ways that please us. Similarly, we can effect millions of non-spontaneous reactions -- getting pure metals from ores, synthesizing curative drugs from simple compounds, altering DNA.
We can make machines that make other machines, machines that mow lawns, move mountains, and go to the moon. We can make the most complex and intricate and beautiful objects imaginable to help or delight or entertain us.
The BAD: Because of the second law -- the direction of energy flow -- life is always threatened.

Every organic chemical of the 30,000 or more different kinds in our bodies that are synthesized by nonspontaneous reactions within us is metastable. All are only kept from instant oxidation in air by activation energies. (The loss or even the radical decrease of just a few essential chemicals could mean death for us.)
Living creatures are essentially energy processing systems that cannot function unless a multitude of "molecular machines", biochemical cycles, operate synchronically in using energy to oppose second law predictions. All of the thousands of biochemical systems that run our bodies are maintained and regulated by feedback subsystems, many composed of complex substances. Most of the compounds in the feedback systems are also synthesized internally by thermodynamically nonspontaneous reactions, effected by utilizing energy ultimately transferred from the metabolism (slow oxidation) of food. When these feedback subsystems fail -- due to inadequate energy inflow, malfunction from critical errors in synthesis, the presence of toxins or competing agents such as bacteria or viruses -- dysfunction, illness, or death results: energy can no longer be processed to carry out the many reactions we need for life that are contrary to the direction predicted by the second law.
You can't get any better for good -- that living is possible due to the second law. And you can't get much worse for bad -- that death is always possible too, due to the second law.

It is really the mother of all serious Murphy's Laws that apply to things.

Still more important to one's philosophy about life, these chemical ideas can startle us into seeing how fortunate we all are: that things don't go wrong more often!

Shouldn't "Why me?" be our near-constant question of wonder and delight at being alive and being able to move and think and create -- in a second-law world that favors dispersed energy and inert sand? Knowledge of the second law makes unrealistic the human cry of "Why me?" that is so frequent at times of tragedy.

At such times, the only rational response is "Why not me?” even though then it is emotionally quite unacceptable.

Life is hard. But it's harder if you don't know how the material world works!

Quotes including the second law

"If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations, then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. And if your theory contradicts the facts, well, sometimes these experimentalists make mistakes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation"--- Sir Arthur Eddington

"Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions"---Seth Lloyd, writing in Nature 430, 971 (26 August 2004); doi: 10.1038/430971a

"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative."---C.P. Snow Rede Lecture in 1959 entitled "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution".

Reference Links and Credentials:

Second Law
entropysimple
shakespeare2ndlaw
entropysite

Frank L. Lambert, Ph. D.
Professor Emeritus (Chemistry)
Occidental College
Los Angeles, CA 90041

Six degrees of separation

2006-04-12T17:36:00.000+05:30

Six degrees of separation:

Ok. So you have a crush on Tom Cruise or Penelope Cruz but feel sad that they are inaccessible. Well, think again, the good news is you are only at the most six handshakes away from them. Don’t believe! Read on.

You may have heard that everyone on Earth is separated from anyone else by no more than six degrees of separation, or six friends of friends of friends.

Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains."

In the 1950's, Ithiel de Sola Pool (MIT) and Manfred Kochen (IBM) set out to prove the theory mathematically. Although they were able to phrase the question (given a set N of people, what is the probability that each member of N is connected to another member via k_1, k_2, k_3...k_n links?), after twenty years they were still unable to solve the problem to their own satisfaction.

In 1967, American sociologist Stanley Milgram devised a new way to test the theory, which he called "the small-world problem." He randomly selected people in the mid-West to send packages to a stranger located in Massachusetts. The senders knew the recipient's name, occupation, and general location. They were instructed to send the package to a person they knew on a first-name basis who they thought was most likely, out of all their friends, to know the target personally. That person would do the same, and so on, until the package was personally delivered to its target recipient.

Although the participants expected the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries, it only took (on average) between five and seven intermediaries to get each package delivered. Milgram's findings were published in Psychology Today and inspired the phrase "six degrees of separation." Playwright John Guare popularized the phrase when he chose it as the title for his 1990 play of the same name.

Although Milgram's findings were discounted after it was discovered that he based his conclusion on a very small number of packages, six degrees of separation became an accepted notion in pop culture after Brett C. Tjaden published a computer game on the University of Virginia's Web site based on the small-world problem. Tjaden used the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) to document connections between different actors. Time Magazine called his site, The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia, one of the "Ten Best Web Sites of 1996."

In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, continued his own earlier research into the phenomenon and recreated Milgram's experiment on the Internet. Watts used an e-mail message as the "package" that needed to be delivered, and surprisingly, after reviewing the data collected by 48,000 senders and 19 targets (in 157 countries), Watts found that the average number of intermediaries was indeed, six. Watts says this shows that email has not fundamentally changed the way social ties are created.

"Why is the small-world phenomenon surprising?” "Why shouldn't it be obvious that we're only 6 degrees of separation apart, or some other small number?" Mathematically minded people, often approach the question with a simple calculation: suppose I have 100 friends, each of whom also has 100 friends. A hundred times 100 makes 10,000 friends of my friends. If each of those 10,000 people has 100 friends, there will be 1 million people 3 degrees away from me. Five steps away, there are 10 billion. So a lot of people would say it's not surprising that the degree of separation is small, because within 5 steps you've done the whole planet.

But there's a big assumption in that calculation. It presumes that each 100 friends are 100 new people. If everyone chose their friends at random from the entire world, the assumption would be valid, but we clearly don't. "The world that we live in is not at all random," as Watts points out. "We are very much constrained by our socioeconomic status, our geographical location, our background, our education and our profession, our interests and hobbies. All these things make our circle of acquaintances highly nonrandom."

To understand then how this works exactly we have to know how hybrid networks function. This is explained in a nice and detailed article at this link.

Watts' research, and the advent of the computer age, has opened up new areas of inquiry related to six degrees of separation in diverse areas of network theory such as power grid analysis, disease transmission, graph theory, corporate communication, and computer circuitry.

The Broken Window Theory

2006-04-12T17:21:00.000+05:30

An Epidemic Theory of Crime -
The Broken Window Theory:

The epidemic theory of crime says that crime is contagious – just as fashion trend is contagious – that it can start with a broken window and spread to an entire community.
The ‘Broken Window’ theory tries to explain why certain areas / cities / places have a higher crime rate than others.

Broken widows was a brainchild of criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. Wilson and Kelling argued that crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive panhandling, they write are all equivalent of broken windows, invitation to more serious crimes.

This thesis suggests that the following sequence of events can be expected in deteriorating neighborhoods. Evidence of decay (accumulated trash, broken windows, deteriorated building exteriors) remains in the neighborhood for a reasonably long period of time. People who live and work in the area feel more vulnerable and begin to withdraw. They become less willing to intervene to maintain public order (for example, to attempt to break up groups of rowdy teens loitering on street corners) or to address physical signs of deterioration.

Sensing this, teens and other possible offenders become bolder and intensify their harassment and vandalism. Residents become yet more fearful and withdraw further from community involvement and upkeep. This atmosphere then attracts offenders from outside the area, who sense that it has become a vulnerable and less risky site for crime.

The "broken window" theory suggests that neighborhood order strategies such as those listed below, help to deter and reduce crime.

• Quick replacement of broken windows
• Prompt removal of abandoned vehicles
• Fast clean up of illegally dumped items, litter and spilled garbage
• Quick paint out of graffiti
• Finding (or building) better places for teens to gather than street corners
• Fresh paint on buildings
• Clean sidewalks and street gutters

As mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani put the theory to work by strictly enforcing laws against small crimes - subway fare evasion, for example. As a result the crime rate (including serious crimes) in New York reduced by a considerable amount in past decade.

This theory has been widely put into practice by Police Departments through out the world. The ‘Broken Window Theory’ has inspired police departments in New York and other major cities to crack down on the small stuff in order to keep out the big stuff. It works: keeping on top of broken windows, graffiti, and other small infractions has reduced the serious crime level.

Does this theory apply to scenarios outside crime? Sure, it does. For example, building software projects...

Don't leave ‘broken windows’ (bad designs, wrong decisions, or poor code) unrepaired. Fix each one as soon as it is discovered. If there is insufficient time to fix it properly, then board it up. Perhaps you can comment out the offending code, or display a "Not Implemented" message, or substitute dummy data instead. Take some action to prevent further damage and to show that you're on top of the situation.

Functional systems deteriorate pretty quickly once windows start breaking. There are other factors that can contribute to software rot, but neglect accelerates the rot faster than any other factor.

Chaos Theory

2006-04-12T16:54:00.000+05:30

Here is a brief account of one of the most widely acclaimed theories of 20th century, the ‘Chaos Theory’; its origin, implications and myths.

Have you ever wondered, why it is difficult or rather impossible to predict,
• Weather few days/weeks/months down the line,
• The stock market future and trends,
• Human behavior or actions,
• Evolutionary patterns of various species,
• Future of our universe

Well, you may tend to think, given the advancement that has taken place in science and technology, especially physics, psychology and computers; it shouldn’t be really an impossible task to model the above-mentioned systems. However, the truth is, the scientists have come to a conclusion that we as humans will never be able to comprehend or model such systems.
The common underlying factors in the above systems are that they all are complex, dynamic systems, which are sensitive to their initial conditions.

Chaos theory attempts to explain the fact that complex and unpredictable results can and will occur in systems that are sensitive to their initial conditions.

History:

The first true experimenter in chaos was a meteorologist, named Edward Lorenz. In 1960, he was working on the problem of weather prediction. He had a computer set up, with a set of twelve equations to model the weather. It didn't predict the weather itself. However this computer program did theoretically predict what the weather might be.

One day in 1961, he wanted to see a particular sequence again. To save time, he started in the middle of the sequence, instead of the beginning. He entered the number off his printout and left to let it run. When he came back an hour later, the sequence had evolved differently. Instead of the same pattern as before, it diverged from the pattern, ending up wildly different from the original. Eventually he figured out what happened. The computer stored the numbers to six decimal places in its memory. To save paper, he only had it print out three decimal places. In the original sequence, the number was .506127, and he had only typed the first three digits, .506.

By all conventional ideas of the time, it should have worked. He should have gotten a sequence very close to the original sequence. A scientist considers himself lucky if he can get measurements with accuracy to three decimal places. Surely the fourth and fifth, impossible to measure using reasonable methods, can't have a huge effect on the outcome of the experiment. Lorenz proved this idea wrong. This effect came to be known as the butterfly effect. The amount of difference in the starting points of the two curves is so small that it is comparable to a butterfly flapping its wings.

"Butterfly Effect," states that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in China could cause tiny atmospheric changes which over a period of time could effect weather patterns in New York

Limitations:

This phenomenon, common to chaos theory, is also known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Just a small change in the initial conditions can drastically change the long-term behavior of a system. Such a small amount of difference in a measurement might be considered experimental noise, background noise, or an inaccuracy of the equipment. Such things are impossible to avoid in even the most isolated lab.

Complex systems usually have many variables involved that define the behavior of the system. Also, these variables are interconnected in ‘n’ number of ways. The human limitations come in firstly understanding and listing all the variables and their dependencies, and secondly in measuring the values of the variables accurately.

There are many variables associated with the weather: temperature, air pressure, wind speed, wind direction, humidity and many more. The equations, which control the weather, involve all of these variables.

Another system in which sensitive dependence on initial conditions is evident is the flip of a coin. There are two variables in a flipping coin: how soon it hits the ground, and how fast it is flipping. Theoretically, it should be possible to control these variables entirely and control how the coin will end up. In practice, it is impossible to control exactly how fast the coin flips and how high it flips. It is possible to put the variables into a certain range, but it is impossible to control it enough to know the final results of the coin toss.

Theories abound as to real-life examples of this phenomenon:

1. The weather: small changes in weather effect larger patterns.
2. The stock market: slight fluctuations in one market can affect many others.
3. Biology: A small change in a virus in monkeys in Africa creates a "thunderstorm" of an effect on the human population around the world with the appearance of the AIDS virus.
4. Evolution: small changes in the chemistry of the early Earth gives rise to life.
5. Psychology: Thought patterns and consciousness altered by small changes in brain chemistry or small changes in physical environmental stimuli.

Although chaos is often thought to refer to randomness and lack of order, it is more accurate to think of it as an apparent randomness that results from complex systems and interactions among systems. According to James Gleick, author of Chaos: Making a New Science, chaos theory is "a revolution not of technology, like the laser revolution or the computer revolution, but a revolution of ideas.”

Myths:

Over the years people have turned the chaos theory in some kind of philosophy and started applying it to anything and everything, including human life.

For e.g. some of the conclusions are:
• A butterfly flapping its wings in china results in producing a tornado in NewYork over a period of time.
• A person leaving from home 5 minutes late than usual, on reaching the bus stop may get hit by the bus and die.

It is important to note that the chaos theory does not predict anything but simply attempts to explain the fact that complex and unpredictable results can and will occur in systems that are sensitive to their initial conditions. In these systems, the cause and effects of many variables may well nullify each other such that they have no effect on the net result.

So if a person leaves from home 5 minutes late, he might on the way gain those 5 min owing to lesser traffic. Or a bus might in fact hit him if he actually leaves on time.

So the point is such kind of assumptions based on chaos theory is futile and improper.

Part 3 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

2006-04-11T18:37:00.000+05:30

Part 3 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

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Jack Welch - CEO - GE - Quotes:

The world of the 1990s and beyond will not belong to 'managers' or those who can make the numbers dance. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders - people who not only have enormous amounts of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.

If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.

Don’t manage - lead change before you have to.

Control your own destiny or someone else will.

Be candid with everyone.

"An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people."

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If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
--Isaac Newton

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Everything you can imagine is real.
--Picasso

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That which is static and repetitive is boring.
That which is dynamic and random is confusing.
In between lies art.
--John A. Locke

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Never give advice...
A wise man won't need it
A fool won't heed it.
--Unknown

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Chaos theory - The butterfly effect

The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does. (Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141)

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"Who the hell is General Failure and why is he reading my drive ?"

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If it does'nt kill you, it makes you strong.

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Theory is when you know something, but it doesn't work.
Practice is when something works, but you don't know why.
Programmers combine theory and practice: nothing works and they don't know why.

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A famous linguist once said:
"There is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."
YEAH, RIGHT

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"The opposite of love is not hate - it is indifference"

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"Leonardo da Vinci was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep"
Sigmund Freud

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"We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly."

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Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think

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We live in a world of scarcity and limits. There are limited natural resources, limited amounts labour, a limited amount of time. Our desires always exceed these limitations and we are forced to make choices.
People act purposefully and rationally to maximise their pleasure given limited time, resources, information and budgets.

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Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.
--Unknown

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True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all.
--Socrates

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Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.
--Rita Mae Brown

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To err is human, to forgive divine.
--Alexander Pope

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Watch your thoughts ; they become words.
Watch your words ; they become actions.
Watch your actions ; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character .
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny .

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weak minds think about people,
average minds think about events,
and great minds think about ideas.

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Having kids is hereditary. If your parents didn't have children, chances are that you won't either.

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Never be tempted to see the other person's point of view,
Because they have different desires,
Different certainties,
And different targets of blame.
Consideration of another's perspective,
Even for a moment,
Can lead to thought.

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The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.--Terry Pratchett

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The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.
-- Margot Fonteyn

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My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being,
with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life,
with productive achievement as his noblest activity,
and reason his only absolute. - Ayn Rand (A Summary of the Objectivist Philosophy )

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"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
- Albert von Szent-Györgyi (1893-1986), 1937 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine

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"Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can."
- Owen Meredith Earl of Lytton

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If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?

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Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."

~ Catch 22

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You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it
~ Atticus Finch From 'To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee'

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Men who have pierced ears are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.

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I drink to make other people interesting

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I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. —Socrates

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Part 2 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

2006-04-10T17:42:00.000+05:30

Part 2 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

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"The beauty of the web, everyone learns from the view code button"
- Flash 5 seminar, August - 2001, Boston MA

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"I sense much NT in you, NT leads to Blue Screen. Blue Screen leads to
downtime, downtime leads to suffering. NT is the path to the darkside."
- Unknown Unix Jedi

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The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities, and make the most of one's resources.
- Vauvenargues

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Happiness is like a Butterfly, the more u chase it the more it dudes u...but when u leave it and concentrate on other things it come and sits on ur shoulder

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"Doing what you like is freedom, liking what you do is happiness!"

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"It's not a bug, it's a random feature."

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"If A equals success, then the formula is: A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z
is keep your mouth shut."
--Albert Einstein

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"Alcohol and calculus don't mix.
Don't drink and derive."
--Unknown

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Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

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"I would like to live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were ever supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever."
- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest

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"Gravitation Cannot be held responsible for People falling in Love"
-Einstien

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"Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac."

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"One of the differences between an average engineer and a good one is the ability to think at a high enough level to choose the important problems to spend programming time on"
- Jay Stelly in "Game design, Secrets of the sages"

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"I quit school in the sixth grade because of pneumonia. Not because I had it, but because I couldn't spell it."
---Boxer Rocky Graziano.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Goddamn writers -- all they do is use up trees and ruin people's eyes.
-- Gus, from Basic Instinct, by Joe Esterhaus

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"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better
than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
-- A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred
Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on
to found Federal Express Corp.)

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Animation is the creation of life, Interaction is to live that life...

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KNOWING MANYTHINGS BUT DOING NOTHING IS KNOWING NOTHING

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The worst bankrupt in the world is the person who has lost his enthusiasm"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nothing is Real"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"In Theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In Practice there is"
- Yogi Berra - As quoted by Bruce Schneier in "Secrets and Lies"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is something to learn everyday!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease. Terrorism has no country. It's transnational, as global an enterprise as Coke or Pepsi or Nike. At the first sign of trouble, terrorists can pull up stakes and move their "factories" from country to country in search of a better deal. Just like the multi-nationals.
- Arundhati Roy

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Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If you follow your own personal destiny then the entire universe conspires to make you succeed.
- Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Airplane, which has been defined as "a collection of parts having an inherent tendency to fall to earth, and requiring constant effort and supervision to stave off that outcome". Only the collaborative efforts of all the component objects of an airplane enable it to fly.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
-- Charles Schultz

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"I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful."
- Pete Hamill

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"I hear and I forget
I see and I remember
I do and I understand"
- Ancient Chinese Proverb.

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- "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-- Mark Twain.

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Never argue with an idiot, they only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly and for the same reason."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing that's why we recommend it daily."
- Zig Ziglar

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think everyone has a photographic memory; it's just that some of us don't have film.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few is only a couple less than several

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I will not tiptoe through life only to arrive safely at death.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Humans are at least as numerous as pigeons, their brains are not significantly costlier than pigeon brains, and for many tasks they are actually superior.
--Richard Dawkins

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All doctors do is support weak genes. Might as well be communists.
-- sigwinch

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quoted from Einstein himself: "Sit on a hot stove for a minute and it feels like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it feels like a minute. That's relativity."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical.
-Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it has to be, its up to me !!!!
So...Go for it !!!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.”
- Samuel Johnson QotD

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember, GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY, GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You should not confuse your career with your life.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your friends love you anyway.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I want to know the mind of God. Everything else is detail.
—Albert Einstein

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less and less.
—Piet Hein, Danish inventor and poet.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but gets you nowhere.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

People who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone else to blame it on.

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Sometimes I wish I were you, just so I could be friends with me.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Smile... it's the second best thing to do with your lips."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alcohol doesn't solve any problems, but then again, neither does milk.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part 1 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

2006-04-10T17:26:00.000+05:30

Part 1 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....
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"Depend upon it, there comes a time when, for every addition of knowledge, you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
-Sherlock Holmes in 'A Study in Scarlet'

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Creativity is just an extension of yourself; Push the limits of the Cosmos; Find yourself!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Pray as if everything depended upon God and work as if everything depended upon man."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

James Rainey
Design Intervention
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.
So far, the Universe is winning."
- Rich Cook

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Smoking helps you lose weight -- one lung at a time!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Work like you don't need the money,
love like you've never been hurt and
dance like you do when nobody's watching."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A rich person is not the one has the most, but is one who needs the least.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Enough bunkers! Enough of the perfection of differences! We ought to be building bridges."
-- Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams, 1995.

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An obstacle is something you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"solving a problem is not a case of finding a solution, it is a case of finding a set of easier problems that you already know how to solve."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Do not worry about whether or not the sun will rise. Be prepared to enjoy it."
Author Unknown

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"This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess."
Rainer Maria Rilke
German Poet, 1875-1926

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The only dumb question is one that you don't ask

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just like programming, it takes loads of syntax to ask a question!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.
-- William Arthur Ward

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Don't focus on the days when you failed. Focus on all of the days when you won. Keep a chart, monitor your successes, and don't give up!
-- Robert Butterworth

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have found in work that you only get back what you put into it, but it does come back gift-wrapped.
-- Dr. Joyce Brothers

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Success isn't something you chase. It's something you have to put forth the effort for constantly. Then maybe it'll come when you least expect it. Most people don't understand that.
-- Michael Jordan

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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
-- Winston Churchill

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"all the talk talk about about keeps you from the work work"
- mike tyler

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you need to pound a nail, use a hammer.
If you need to make a hole, use a drill.
If you need to tighten a nut, use a wrench.

A hammer isn't "better" than a wrench. How you frame a question has as much to do with the answer as "the answer". Don't let your detractors define the argument for you.

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People are often overconfident concerning the usefulness and accuracy of their own knowledge and information, and those people often communicate more extreme opinions.
-- Anat Admati

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Computers do what they are told, not what you want.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"If you play a wrong note, play it again twice as loud and everyone will think you did it on purpose the first time."
-Thelonious Monk

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"As long as you're green, you're growing. When you get ripe, you start to rot."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It only took Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin 3 days to get to the moon. But they spent 5 years preparing.
-Kerry Thompson advising to a newbie in Lingo forums.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival

- W. Edwards Deming

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wrote on my heart
"NO THROUGH FARE"
Love knocked and said
I enter everywhere.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thought for the day: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anything less than extraordinary is not acceptable to me.
- Dlg from the movie - "Dream of an insomniac"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Why is the moon more important than the sun?"
"Because we need the light more at night!"
-- Nasredin

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trust that still, small voice that says, "This might work and I'll try it."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't listen

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I disapprove of what you say but I'll defend you till death

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You may not like my personality, but at least I got one

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why tourture yourself, when life does it for you

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Life U Love The One Whom U Can Never Have

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A kiss is just a kiss til you find the one you love, a hug is just a hug til it’s the one you are thinking of, a dream is just a dream til you make it come true, love is just a word til it’s proven to you

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When you think the World has turned it's back on you, turn around, you most likely turned your back on the World

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Introduction

2006-04-10T17:13:00.000+05:30

Welcome all,

This is my own space in the universe of internet. What you should expect from my blog:

Well info on any topic that interests me. To start with here are some of them:
- Science (especially Physics)
- Management
- Philosophy
- Spirituality
- Finance
- Investment
- Movies and Music

and many more....

Hope you enjoy going through them.

Cheers,
Sandy