Just a very short note - sometimes I think God is being cruel by creating a situation that brings something (could be just about anything that you want/need) so near, but keeping it just out of reach . . .
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Monday, August 30, 2004
Slow news week
Well, its actually been a "too much work" week.
I'm suddenly in the middle of so much "healthcare" stuff. We completed the website redesign for The Heart Institute a couple of days back. We're also currently working on an electronic medical records management system called DGFile which is due for launch in a couple of months time. I was also "researching" (as in - going crazy googling) methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin for one of my relatives.
I'm beginning to understand how delicate and precisely constructed a human body is. Its fascinating - each and every little bone or nerve in one's body has a pre-determined function and if that bone or nerve was just a little bit off the original "specifications" it would lead to the collapse of the body. I must do some background reading on this some day soon.
Over the weekend I wifi-enabled my home. Its cool and cheap - I remember when wifi access points costed over RS 1 lakh (just about 3 years back actually). Now its around Rs 5000 for the access point and USB wifi adapters (ideal for desktops) cost around Rs 2000. Wifi pcmcia cards for laptops cost a little bit more than that. Its not as cheap as it is in the USA or elsewhere but it is getting affordable.
I was watching "Gayab" on DVD this Sunday. An oft-repeated movie concept - guy becoming invisible and then wrecking havoc on the city. I would give it a 3/10 - mostly for the background score and songs. Prawaal Raman (director) did a far better job in "Darna Mana Hai" (a collection of horror short stories).
I'm in the market for a new car, by the way. If you have a suggestion, please feel free to post a comment or send me email. I've been looking at the Hyundai Accent, Tata Indigo, Honda City, ... and many more. My current car (a Santro) has served me well for more than 4 years now and its not even lost its "new car smell" (thats what mom tells me). I guess I have this urge to "preserve and protect" - I still have stuff I got when I was a kid with not a scratch and mostly as good as new.
I'm suddenly in the middle of so much "healthcare" stuff. We completed the website redesign for The Heart Institute a couple of days back. We're also currently working on an electronic medical records management system called DGFile which is due for launch in a couple of months time. I was also "researching" (as in - going crazy googling) methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin for one of my relatives.
I'm beginning to understand how delicate and precisely constructed a human body is. Its fascinating - each and every little bone or nerve in one's body has a pre-determined function and if that bone or nerve was just a little bit off the original "specifications" it would lead to the collapse of the body. I must do some background reading on this some day soon.
Over the weekend I wifi-enabled my home. Its cool and cheap - I remember when wifi access points costed over RS 1 lakh (just about 3 years back actually). Now its around Rs 5000 for the access point and USB wifi adapters (ideal for desktops) cost around Rs 2000. Wifi pcmcia cards for laptops cost a little bit more than that. Its not as cheap as it is in the USA or elsewhere but it is getting affordable.
I was watching "Gayab" on DVD this Sunday. An oft-repeated movie concept - guy becoming invisible and then wrecking havoc on the city. I would give it a 3/10 - mostly for the background score and songs. Prawaal Raman (director) did a far better job in "Darna Mana Hai" (a collection of horror short stories).
I'm in the market for a new car, by the way. If you have a suggestion, please feel free to post a comment or send me email. I've been looking at the Hyundai Accent, Tata Indigo, Honda City, ... and many more. My current car (a Santro) has served me well for more than 4 years now and its not even lost its "new car smell" (thats what mom tells me). I guess I have this urge to "preserve and protect" - I still have stuff I got when I was a kid with not a scratch and mostly as good as new.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Gmail invites
OK I finally get to invite people to Gmail. :) I have 5 invites left, if anyone wants one please email or leave a comment here.
Monday, August 23, 2004
Blog housekeeping, etc
I've been doing some blog housekeeping today (now you know how addicted I am). I added a reading list, a gizmo wishlist and also updated the list of blogs I read.
The reading list is basically a list of books I'm reading (or would like to read soon). A neat feature of allconsuming.net allows me to display the book covers etc as you can see under the "Reading list" section on the right.
The gizmo wishlist is a list of cool gadgets I'd like to have (hint hint!). The items with a "-vs-" on them mean that I haven't made up my mind which of the two has the better form (the function being more or less the same - again this is debatable). And if you didn't know already - I'm gadget crazy.
BTW I discovered Dave Barry's hilarious column today. You can read it here (you'll have to go through a free registration). Here's a preview of his recent column:
You can also subscribe to his blog - check the "Dave Barry" entry under the "Blogs I read" section on this page. I've recently updated the blogs list with several good blogs (actually there's too much, I must prune them some day) like Dave Barry, Gizmodo, Hobotraveler etc. Have a look, maybe you'll find something that interests you.
Before I forget - don't watch "The Butterfly Effect". The movie gets a 0/10 from me. I watched the DVD on Sunday and the only consolation were the features on the chaos theory and time travel that came as a part of the DVD. The movie basically is about a guy going back in time and trying to set right the wrong decisions he took along the way. The concept is good but the implementation is shoddy.
The name "Butterfly Effect" describes the phenomenon where a small change at one place in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere, e.g. a butterfly flapping its wings might cause a typhoon half way across the world. Google it and you'll find several interesting articles on the topic.
There's this guy in the DVD featurette that talks about the choices we make in life. And about how one's life may change if something were done differently along the way. Interesting thought...
And there's a caption some place on the featurette that says something to effect that while nature intended life to be in chaos, mankind struggles to bring order to it. So I guess its ok to be chaotic. :)
The reading list is basically a list of books I'm reading (or would like to read soon). A neat feature of allconsuming.net allows me to display the book covers etc as you can see under the "Reading list" section on the right.
The gizmo wishlist is a list of cool gadgets I'd like to have (hint hint!). The items with a "-vs-" on them mean that I haven't made up my mind which of the two has the better form (the function being more or less the same - again this is debatable). And if you didn't know already - I'm gadget crazy.
BTW I discovered Dave Barry's hilarious column today. You can read it here (you'll have to go through a free registration). Here's a preview of his recent column:
Competitive weightlifting is hugely popular in Greece. This dates back to ancient times, when the Greeks had to be very strong because pretty much all their possessions were made of marble. A single salad fork could weigh 50 pounds. Just to get through a meal you needed biceps like basketballs.
You can also subscribe to his blog - check the "Dave Barry" entry under the "Blogs I read" section on this page. I've recently updated the blogs list with several good blogs (actually there's too much, I must prune them some day) like Dave Barry, Gizmodo, Hobotraveler etc. Have a look, maybe you'll find something that interests you.
Before I forget - don't watch "The Butterfly Effect". The movie gets a 0/10 from me. I watched the DVD on Sunday and the only consolation were the features on the chaos theory and time travel that came as a part of the DVD. The movie basically is about a guy going back in time and trying to set right the wrong decisions he took along the way. The concept is good but the implementation is shoddy.
The name "Butterfly Effect" describes the phenomenon where a small change at one place in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere, e.g. a butterfly flapping its wings might cause a typhoon half way across the world. Google it and you'll find several interesting articles on the topic.
There's this guy in the DVD featurette that talks about the choices we make in life. And about how one's life may change if something were done differently along the way. Interesting thought...
And there's a caption some place on the featurette that says something to effect that while nature intended life to be in chaos, mankind struggles to bring order to it. So I guess its ok to be chaotic. :)
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Movie: Phone Booth
Watched "Phone Booth" on Star Movies yesterday night. Filmed in ten days, no special effects, limited budget, just one location (the phone booth itself) - but none of that stops this movie from being extremely engaging. Colin Farrell does a great job with his acting - his desperation at being corner in the booth and later his confessions makes him big time material. And Keifer Sutherland (the voice on the phone) is deadly even though we get to see him only at the end of the movie for about 30 seconds. There are some loopholes in the story (Google it and you'll find many thoughts on bloopers) but I rate it 9/10.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
"Send to a friend"
*UPDATE:* I stand corrected - amazon.com does have a "Send to a friend" option. But its so far down in the page that you would need to look real hard to find it! Why not put it as an icon next to the book cover, I wonder. Read on for my original post . . .
I was browsing barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com today and found that both these (extremely popular) websites did not have a simple "Send to a friend" option that is found on any self-respecting website that claims to be a resource for anything.
I browse through books, I find something interesting, I want to recommend to a friend - but I can't (or atleast I have to take the long route of copy/pasting the URL into an email and sending it out). This is something which will deter me from doing it often. And I guess I don't not need to emphasize that the best publicity is word of mouth.
Maybe I'm missing something (time to get my eyes checked?) but I seem to have searched through most of the book listings pages and did not find the "Send to friend" option on any of them.
Amazon.com allows me to see the front cover, back cover, flap and excerpts of the "Da Vinci Code" up close and personal (they provide a "zoom" function!) - but they don't seem to provide me a simple "send to friend" icon that I can use to recommend that book to someone else.
Is technology ignoring the simpler (and more valuable) things in life?
BTW go read the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown!
I was browsing barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com today and found that both these (extremely popular) websites did not have a simple "Send to a friend" option that is found on any self-respecting website that claims to be a resource for anything.
I browse through books, I find something interesting, I want to recommend to a friend - but I can't (or atleast I have to take the long route of copy/pasting the URL into an email and sending it out). This is something which will deter me from doing it often. And I guess I don't not need to emphasize that the best publicity is word of mouth.
Maybe I'm missing something (time to get my eyes checked?) but I seem to have searched through most of the book listings pages and did not find the "Send to friend" option on any of them.
Amazon.com allows me to see the front cover, back cover, flap and excerpts of the "Da Vinci Code" up close and personal (they provide a "zoom" function!) - but they don't seem to provide me a simple "send to friend" icon that I can use to recommend that book to someone else.
Is technology ignoring the simpler (and more valuable) things in life?
BTW go read the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown!
Monday, August 16, 2004
Sunday, August 15, 2004
Independence day, some thoughts
Happy Independence Day!
This day, 57 years ago, the subcontinent freed itself from the notions of oppression. It become free from those who were trying to make decisions for it. Today I saw several documentaries on the suffering and pain that our forefathers had to undergo under foreign rule and how finally good triumphed over evil.
If pain, suffering, evil, oppression, ... are all so bad - why do we have so much of it in this world?
I believe - without suffering we will not cherish joy, without evil we will never appreciate the good, without oppression we will never appreciate freedom.
Would the world be a better place if there was peace, happiness, prosperity and plenty all around? If people went around smiling, holding out their hand and saying "Live long and prosper"?
No.
We need to suffer in order to progress. Or atleast thats what I think. And if you disagree - well, let me remind you this is a free world. :-)
Mankind cannot florish unless there is resistance. "Survival of the fittest" said some wise guy. "Evolution" said some other (or maybe the same guy?). Why would we need to evolve if we had not a care in the world, were smiling away to glory and had plenty of everything? We would still be roaming the orchards eating apples.
Even God acknowledges the presense of "evil". I'm sure God would get pretty bored if He didn't have evil to fight against.
Evil balances good. Joy balances suffering. Sadness balances happiness.
But what about world peace? Do I think that world peace is not achievable?
Well, if world peace did come about I am sure we would find alien life with whom to fight against. And then the story would start all over again but this time around, Earth as a whole would be the "good guys" and the aliens would be the "bad guys". Star Trek, any one?
There's so much going on in this world which seems absurd, but it can all be explained away by the fact that we need conflicts. Conflicts could be with another country, with ideologies, with your neighbour, with yourself, ... If conflicts went away, evolution would stop.
I was rummaging through some of the old stuff (and I have plenty of it) in my closet today morning. "Let me clean up this mess", I thought to myself. So out went old magazines, sticky jumbo rubber bands, manuals for equipment I no longer used, ... I must say I am pretty content with my cleaning spree. My closet seems cleaner for the effort.
Most important of all I discovered, in the junk, a cool "noise cancelling" headset with mic which had a USB interface! I never knew I had this gem of a noise cancelling USB headset and was out to buy one for myself ever since I discovered VOIP (voice-over-IP, for the uninitiated, is the ability to place phone calls over the Internet). And this one was good - I tested it out by playing some music out loud while using the mic to record my voice, and the noise cancelling feature worked flawlessly - no music, just my (sweet) voice was recorded.
I realized that even junk could be useful some day. At one point in time that headset had seemed junk to me. But today, its a gem.
Unless we have the need, we wouldn't appreciate something.
"Want to know the value of a milli-second? Ask the athlete that came second", said some interesting email that was forwarded a billion times.
Want to know the value of freedom? Ask the country that spent hundreds of years in oppression and humiliation.
And acknowledge that without oppression freedom is not worth the paper its written on.
BTW some other stuff I discovered in the junk (warning - shameless self-promotion ahead!) is a news clip from the London Sunday Mail written years back about our "email to post" service. Here's an online link to that article. And also a book released by IDRC Canada that features our "E-marketers" project. Have a read if you will. For those wondering what "FOOD India" is, look at our home page. I'm the project coordinator at that organization in addition to doing several other things like write this blog and run websites, not necessarily in that order.
I think Eminem's recent "How Come" is a cool song. He doesn't just rhyme, there's also some rhythm to the rhyme. Perhaps D12 did some good. "My Band" also sounds good.
One last thing before I go - if something is too good to be true, is it?
This day, 57 years ago, the subcontinent freed itself from the notions of oppression. It become free from those who were trying to make decisions for it. Today I saw several documentaries on the suffering and pain that our forefathers had to undergo under foreign rule and how finally good triumphed over evil.
If pain, suffering, evil, oppression, ... are all so bad - why do we have so much of it in this world?
I believe - without suffering we will not cherish joy, without evil we will never appreciate the good, without oppression we will never appreciate freedom.
Would the world be a better place if there was peace, happiness, prosperity and plenty all around? If people went around smiling, holding out their hand and saying "Live long and prosper"?
No.
We need to suffer in order to progress. Or atleast thats what I think. And if you disagree - well, let me remind you this is a free world. :-)
Mankind cannot florish unless there is resistance. "Survival of the fittest" said some wise guy. "Evolution" said some other (or maybe the same guy?). Why would we need to evolve if we had not a care in the world, were smiling away to glory and had plenty of everything? We would still be roaming the orchards eating apples.
Even God acknowledges the presense of "evil". I'm sure God would get pretty bored if He didn't have evil to fight against.
Evil balances good. Joy balances suffering. Sadness balances happiness.
But what about world peace? Do I think that world peace is not achievable?
Well, if world peace did come about I am sure we would find alien life with whom to fight against. And then the story would start all over again but this time around, Earth as a whole would be the "good guys" and the aliens would be the "bad guys". Star Trek, any one?
There's so much going on in this world which seems absurd, but it can all be explained away by the fact that we need conflicts. Conflicts could be with another country, with ideologies, with your neighbour, with yourself, ... If conflicts went away, evolution would stop.
I was rummaging through some of the old stuff (and I have plenty of it) in my closet today morning. "Let me clean up this mess", I thought to myself. So out went old magazines, sticky jumbo rubber bands, manuals for equipment I no longer used, ... I must say I am pretty content with my cleaning spree. My closet seems cleaner for the effort.
Most important of all I discovered, in the junk, a cool "noise cancelling" headset with mic which had a USB interface! I never knew I had this gem of a noise cancelling USB headset and was out to buy one for myself ever since I discovered VOIP (voice-over-IP, for the uninitiated, is the ability to place phone calls over the Internet). And this one was good - I tested it out by playing some music out loud while using the mic to record my voice, and the noise cancelling feature worked flawlessly - no music, just my (sweet) voice was recorded.
I realized that even junk could be useful some day. At one point in time that headset had seemed junk to me. But today, its a gem.
Unless we have the need, we wouldn't appreciate something.
"Want to know the value of a milli-second? Ask the athlete that came second", said some interesting email that was forwarded a billion times.
Want to know the value of freedom? Ask the country that spent hundreds of years in oppression and humiliation.
And acknowledge that without oppression freedom is not worth the paper its written on.
BTW some other stuff I discovered in the junk (warning - shameless self-promotion ahead!) is a news clip from the London Sunday Mail written years back about our "email to post" service. Here's an online link to that article. And also a book released by IDRC Canada that features our "E-marketers" project. Have a read if you will. For those wondering what "FOOD India" is, look at our home page. I'm the project coordinator at that organization in addition to doing several other things like write this blog and run websites, not necessarily in that order.
I think Eminem's recent "How Come" is a cool song. He doesn't just rhyme, there's also some rhythm to the rhyme. Perhaps D12 did some good. "My Band" also sounds good.
One last thing before I go - if something is too good to be true, is it?
Thursday, August 12, 2004
Monday, August 09, 2004
Six Technologies That Will Change the World
I read this article at Business 2.0 on six technologies that will change the world. Makes interesting reading. Who knows - ten or twenty years down the line all this may be part of daily life.
Six Technologies That Will Change the World
(and for those that don't have a Business 2.0 subscription click here for the same article)
Six Technologies That Will Change the World
(and for those that don't have a Business 2.0 subscription click here for the same article)
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Thanks, random thoughts on change
First off thanks to "dimbu" for helping me find something that I had been searching for quite some time now. :)
I watched "Main Hoon Na" today. Nice Hindi movie directed by Farah Khan (she's a choreographer and this is her first film as director and I hope its the first of many more good films from her). I would give it a 7 out of 10.
While I was watching the movie (on DVD) I realized suddenly that I'm holding 3 different remote controls ("clickers" as the cool guys call it). And I remembered a time when all we had at home was a radio (I must be ancient!). I used to fiddle around with it and even got it to receive some strange morse-code like transmissions from ship-to-shore communications! Then I got a multi-band (or is it universal band, whatever) radio that could receive tranmissions from "far off countries" ranging from the BBC in London to interesting stuff from Australian shores. That was fun! I spent hours with that radio - but try as I might I could not make it receive any alien transmissions from Mars.
Then there was the TV. Our first was a black and white Dyanora TV (ancient, ancient, ancient!). And we had exactly one TV channel to watch. Not satisfied with that, Dad and I used to fiddle around with the antenna and the TV tuner and finally one day managed to "catch" the weak TV signals from Roopavahini (I think thats what it was called) TV channel from Sri Lanka! Wow, that was celebration time!! All we got was a faint ghost image with lot of static and somewhat passable audio. But we were happy with the fruits of a job well done.
Twenty years down the line (see, I may not be so ancient) we have a hundred free channels, dozens of "pay TV" channels, DVD, broadband video on demand (and the lucky guys in the USA and elsewhere have TiVO, interactive TV and many other interesting things to waste time with). And I'm holding three clickers.
Times change - the world changes with it. Which is why perhaps we should always look at the big picture and not get bogged in the past or the small problems (they will be small - ten or even five years down the line) we may have to face today. Looking around me I see testimonies to the undying spirit of mankind - the urge to explore and succeed. Regardless of the fact that we still do not know how we came to be and what the heck we're doing here.
So why I am preaching? Well, I need to do something other than talk technology and business. Have fun and enjoy!
This is my thirteen blog post (and no, its not a Friday).
I watched "Main Hoon Na" today. Nice Hindi movie directed by Farah Khan (she's a choreographer and this is her first film as director and I hope its the first of many more good films from her). I would give it a 7 out of 10.
While I was watching the movie (on DVD) I realized suddenly that I'm holding 3 different remote controls ("clickers" as the cool guys call it). And I remembered a time when all we had at home was a radio (I must be ancient!). I used to fiddle around with it and even got it to receive some strange morse-code like transmissions from ship-to-shore communications! Then I got a multi-band (or is it universal band, whatever) radio that could receive tranmissions from "far off countries" ranging from the BBC in London to interesting stuff from Australian shores. That was fun! I spent hours with that radio - but try as I might I could not make it receive any alien transmissions from Mars.
Then there was the TV. Our first was a black and white Dyanora TV (ancient, ancient, ancient!). And we had exactly one TV channel to watch. Not satisfied with that, Dad and I used to fiddle around with the antenna and the TV tuner and finally one day managed to "catch" the weak TV signals from Roopavahini (I think thats what it was called) TV channel from Sri Lanka! Wow, that was celebration time!! All we got was a faint ghost image with lot of static and somewhat passable audio. But we were happy with the fruits of a job well done.
Twenty years down the line (see, I may not be so ancient) we have a hundred free channels, dozens of "pay TV" channels, DVD, broadband video on demand (and the lucky guys in the USA and elsewhere have TiVO, interactive TV and many other interesting things to waste time with). And I'm holding three clickers.
Times change - the world changes with it. Which is why perhaps we should always look at the big picture and not get bogged in the past or the small problems (they will be small - ten or even five years down the line) we may have to face today. Looking around me I see testimonies to the undying spirit of mankind - the urge to explore and succeed. Regardless of the fact that we still do not know how we came to be and what the heck we're doing here.
So why I am preaching? Well, I need to do something other than talk technology and business. Have fun and enjoy!
This is my thirteen blog post (and no, its not a Friday).
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
A history lesson, big companies / bad decisions, and other such stuff
Hello there! :)
Continuing with my "blog evangelism" here are some links to sites that tell you about the history of blogs - look here, here and here. And if you are the bookish type check out this book.
I'm wondering what makes big companies make bad decisions? The type of stuff that is absolutely detested by customers but which "big company" makes any way because it feels so grandiose about itself and doesn't bother what customers think? Let me give you an example to help you along.
I subscribe to Sify's Broadband service at home - for those that are reading this from the other side of the world (yes I am a well-read blogger now and on the verge of winning a Bloggie) Sify is one of India's (few) national ISPs that provides dialup and broadband (in addition to esoteric "corporate offerings" such as IP based VPN, VPN based IPs, and whatever).
Right from when I received access to my broadband account I have been very happy. In fact I was estastic initially because they had no bandwidth or speed cap and it costed just Rs 1000 per month all you can surf. Which meant I could like download 20GB every day at speeds ranging from 512 kbps to 1 mbps (and at 2am in the night even more), which is a boon by the way to the starving, poor, Internet-impoverished Indians like me. But Sify soon realised that I (and many like me) were a hazard to their bottomlines and hence promptly put a bandwidth and/or speed cap based on which one had to purchase the "recharge packs". So now I've settled for a paltry 64kbps connection with no bandwidth cap (its based on hours I use, and comes with no metering on Sundays which is when I hog). But I was not complaining - until now.
A few weeks back the powers-that-be at Sify Broadband decided that all its users are computer newbies and hence needed divine assistance. So over the weekend they made it mandatory for users to download some sort of program that provides you an "easy to use interface to login to your Sify Broadband account". Well, I had no problems with that either. Earlier I would get a login page whenever I tried to browse without first signing in and once I was signed in I could browse. But hey, this program was supposed to be easy to use! So I decided to give it a try (I had no other choice, as I was about to discover).
The problem started when after installing this easy to use program I was asked to uninstall my existing antivirus program (I use Grisoft's AVG an excellent antivirus program, by the way). The easy to use broadband sign-in refused to work till I uninstalled AVG (and prayed that tons of viruses not hit my system at that exact point in time, but I had insurance in the form of ZoneAlarm which is another great product). Then, to my surprise, the easy to use program went ahead and installed an outdated copy of McAfee's VirusScan program which it claimed would protect me from the evils that lurk out there.
OK... what's happening here? What good does it do to Sify to force McAfee VirusScan down the pipes to each of its customers? Maybe McAfee was in cahoots. But I failed to get the idea behind an outdated copy of the scanner. So I thought while I'm stuck with VirusScan I might as well update it so that its current - trading AVG for VirusScan, no big deal as long it prevents those creepie crawlies from getting into my system. Now comes the best part - the copy of VirusScan that the easy to use broadband sign-in program installed refuses to be updated. The "Update Agent" always quits with a cryptic "unspecified error".
I called up the "customer care" and got an answer that due to various reasons all users had to install the new sign-in program, remove their existing antivirus software, and install the (outdated) McAfee VirusScan program. I asked the tech support guy what would happen if I wanted to use an antivirus software that I already had - and he replies "Sir, have you purchased the antivirus software?". Does Sify think that we are all software pirates or that quality free software does not exist? I gave up trying to explain to tech support that Grisoft's AVG was an excellent freeware antivirus software.
So now I am stuck with an easy to use sign-in program and a vestige of an antivirus program that is over two weeks old. I'm praying for some real divine assistance. I'm wondering what it takes for big companies to make bad (or suicidal decisions) like this one. And I'm waiting for Reliance Infocomm to start offering its broadband-to-home service and hoping better sense prevails with them.
I read today in NewsWeek's cover story that Estonia is the country which is considered the software developer haven. India better look out - Estonia is valued for its cheap, high quality developers that are on a nearer time zone to the West.
And according to the same cover story (which cites an impressive sounding "index") Nigeria has the happiest people in the world. Looks like we'll have to look hard at what happiness is really all about. So get jiggy with it.
Continuing with my "blog evangelism" here are some links to sites that tell you about the history of blogs - look here, here and here. And if you are the bookish type check out this book.
I'm wondering what makes big companies make bad decisions? The type of stuff that is absolutely detested by customers but which "big company" makes any way because it feels so grandiose about itself and doesn't bother what customers think? Let me give you an example to help you along.
I subscribe to Sify's Broadband service at home - for those that are reading this from the other side of the world (yes I am a well-read blogger now and on the verge of winning a Bloggie) Sify is one of India's (few) national ISPs that provides dialup and broadband (in addition to esoteric "corporate offerings" such as IP based VPN, VPN based IPs, and whatever).
Right from when I received access to my broadband account I have been very happy. In fact I was estastic initially because they had no bandwidth or speed cap and it costed just Rs 1000 per month all you can surf. Which meant I could like download 20GB every day at speeds ranging from 512 kbps to 1 mbps (and at 2am in the night even more), which is a boon by the way to the starving, poor, Internet-impoverished Indians like me. But Sify soon realised that I (and many like me) were a hazard to their bottomlines and hence promptly put a bandwidth and/or speed cap based on which one had to purchase the "recharge packs". So now I've settled for a paltry 64kbps connection with no bandwidth cap (its based on hours I use, and comes with no metering on Sundays which is when I hog). But I was not complaining - until now.
A few weeks back the powers-that-be at Sify Broadband decided that all its users are computer newbies and hence needed divine assistance. So over the weekend they made it mandatory for users to download some sort of program that provides you an "easy to use interface to login to your Sify Broadband account". Well, I had no problems with that either. Earlier I would get a login page whenever I tried to browse without first signing in and once I was signed in I could browse. But hey, this program was supposed to be easy to use! So I decided to give it a try (I had no other choice, as I was about to discover).
The problem started when after installing this easy to use program I was asked to uninstall my existing antivirus program (I use Grisoft's AVG an excellent antivirus program, by the way). The easy to use broadband sign-in refused to work till I uninstalled AVG (and prayed that tons of viruses not hit my system at that exact point in time, but I had insurance in the form of ZoneAlarm which is another great product). Then, to my surprise, the easy to use program went ahead and installed an outdated copy of McAfee's VirusScan program which it claimed would protect me from the evils that lurk out there.
OK... what's happening here? What good does it do to Sify to force McAfee VirusScan down the pipes to each of its customers? Maybe McAfee was in cahoots. But I failed to get the idea behind an outdated copy of the scanner. So I thought while I'm stuck with VirusScan I might as well update it so that its current - trading AVG for VirusScan, no big deal as long it prevents those creepie crawlies from getting into my system. Now comes the best part - the copy of VirusScan that the easy to use broadband sign-in program installed refuses to be updated. The "Update Agent" always quits with a cryptic "unspecified error".
I called up the "customer care" and got an answer that due to various reasons all users had to install the new sign-in program, remove their existing antivirus software, and install the (outdated) McAfee VirusScan program. I asked the tech support guy what would happen if I wanted to use an antivirus software that I already had - and he replies "Sir, have you purchased the antivirus software?". Does Sify think that we are all software pirates or that quality free software does not exist? I gave up trying to explain to tech support that Grisoft's AVG was an excellent freeware antivirus software.
So now I am stuck with an easy to use sign-in program and a vestige of an antivirus program that is over two weeks old. I'm praying for some real divine assistance. I'm wondering what it takes for big companies to make bad (or suicidal decisions) like this one. And I'm waiting for Reliance Infocomm to start offering its broadband-to-home service and hoping better sense prevails with them.
I read today in NewsWeek's cover story that Estonia is the country which is considered the software developer haven. India better look out - Estonia is valued for its cheap, high quality developers that are on a nearer time zone to the West.
And according to the same cover story (which cites an impressive sounding "index") Nigeria has the happiest people in the world. Looks like we'll have to look hard at what happiness is really all about. So get jiggy with it.
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