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In case you didn't know, PM Modi's clever spin is that if his government has put up even a single pole in a whole village, providing electricity to say a govt office there, or put up even several poles but no electric cables on them and so on, in theory the village is "electricity access ready". The argument here being that whenever the lines are actually connected to the power grid, the electricity will be arriving, since "the poles are already installed".

http://www.business-standard.c...

The current ruling party has apparently learned that hiring social media IT teams tha spam social media with lies and exaggerations and feel-good promises is a good way of scoring votes, instead of needing to do any actual development work.

Nuclear power.

http://www.newindianexpress.co...
http://www.business-standard.c...
http://timesofindia.indiatimes...
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
http://www.hindustantimes.com/...

Sure, in those stories you'll find India planning on adding 2 or 3 GW of solar energy capacity. You'll also see plans to add 7 to 10 GW of nuclear energy capacity. They know they can't rely on the sun and wind alone to keep their economy going.

If you make sure an H1B holder is paid over $100k a year the abuses will stop.

Trump has proposed a bill that sets minimum H1B wage at $130k (up from $60k).

http://wap.business-standard.c...

We all hate Martin Shkreli because he's smug and arrogant about what he does, but look at the Mylan CEO Heather Bresch and Epipen overcharging (her daddy is Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin). She's just as much an asshole but feigns being an honest and compassionate when she's interviewed. http://www.latimes.com/busines... Shkreli is at least honest about his doucheness. Bresch and CEOs like her and for ripping off the taxpayer millions all they get is a slap on the wrist http://www.business-standard.c... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/hea...

But you try shoplifting a stick of gum and watch happens. The golden rule is whoever has the gold the gets to break the rules.

Moral of the story is if you hate this then stop voting for the people that let them do it.

Radhakrishnan was basically Indias "W. von Braun" and made ISRO the success it is today - including MOM. He just retired today.
After delivering five consecutive successful PSLV missions, including the PSLV-C08 that lifted Chandrayaan-I, and leading several crucial technology development at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Radhakrishnan took the reins of India's space programme in November 2009.

With the 12 successful PSLV missions, the successful launch of GSLV with indigenous cryogenic stage, the Mars Orbiter Mission, LVM-3 experimental flight with CARE module, the six Insat/GSAT satellites, three navigation satellites and six earth observation satellites (including RISAT-1, the first microwave imaging satellite), Radhakrishnan is leaving Isro at its “most glorified pedestal ever”, it said.
He has been nominated to Natures top ten scientists list
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-te...
http://www.business-standard.c...

Having a passport canceled doesn't effect citizenship. Snowden's statement is rubbish on that point.

Prepared to issue one-entry travel document to Snowden: US

"We reject - you've heard Assange say earlier that he's sort of marooned in Russia. That's not true. We're prepared to issue one-entry travel document. He's still a US citizen. He still enjoys the rights of his US citizenship, which include the right to a free and fair trial for the crimes he's been accused of," the State Department spokesperson, Patrick Ventrell, told reporters at his daily news conference yesterday.

"We reject the notion that this is some sort of political prosecution. Indeed, it's not. These are serious crimes, serious violations of his obligations, and as somebody who had access to classified information, and so our position is that he needs to face a free and fair trial and not be a fugitive," Ventrell said.

They help in explaining behaviour of black holes. See here

according to this report it's not a lens, but a diffraction grating.

From linked article:

"Our flat lens opens up a new type of technology. We're presenting a new way of making lenses. It's extremely exciting," says principal investigator Federico Capasso, professor of applied physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

Sorry, matey, it ain't that new, it's just a new application of a well established physical property. I do seem to remember using diffraction gratings to magnify light-bending effects at college in 1992 - specifically to fire an EM pulse at 450nm (near blue part of the visible spectrum) through a sample and use a calibrated* diffraction grating to amplify the signal to a photographic plate. What you end up with, essentially, is a highly magnified image (on the order of millions of times) with a very low distortion, with which you can determine the structure of the sample (be it a crystal lattice, eg. graphite, or a double helix, eg. DNA; each molecule has its own unique diffraction pattern). Generally you would use X-rays as pretty much anything is at least partially transparent to this wavelength, but since we had to use visible light from a very low powered lasing LED, we had to use visible-transparent samples. We got stuck with a quartz crystal. Still interesting physics, though, and some very pretty pictures.

*calibrating a diffraction grating is very simple: all you do is make the spacing between the lines on the plate equal to the wavelength of the light you're using. For far blue, you'd use a 400nm grating, for red 700nm. These are but two of several calibrated plates available.

You may call India "the world's largest democracy" - but I call it the world's largest hypocrisy, the world's largest kleptocracy.

Elections in India have been reduced to a farce - but that doesn't seem to bother you, as long as you can make a technical claim that there are elections.

Now, now. Don't be a troll. The same thing can be said of any country in the world. Just because political parties swoop real low to influence your vote, it doesn't mean the voting system itself is broken and unfair. That said there are severe consequences when such laws are broken. The Election Commission of India by all means is a strong and independent body.

Take a look at the latest electoral antics from the ruling Congress Party:

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/guj-polls-cong-meticulously-plotting-to-dethrone-modi/183402/on

http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=772594

Now they're promising free homes to people who'll vote against the opposition party. They're handing out "registration forms" which carry no legal weight whatsoever, in an attempt to target the most vulnerable and gullible sections of society.

The ruling party at the Centre has committed itself to using any means, by hook or by crook, no matter how foul, to defeat political opponents. The day isn't far off when they'll be kidnapping opponents and physically eliminating them.

Did you even read the links you posted? Congress is the opposition party. Ruling party happens to be the BJP in Gujrat. There is no mention of "registration forms" or free housing within those links.

India is no longer a democracy - it's now just a dictatorship punctuated by elections.

Sure, a dictatorship who's term ends every 5 years. 1.2~ billion people and this is the way a country is run when everyone's voice is heard. That is called democracy. If you are unhappy, move to China and complain there.

You may call India "the world's largest democracy" - but I call it the world's largest hypocrisy, the world's largest kleptocracy.

Elections in India have been reduced to a farce - but that doesn't seem to bother you, as long as you can make a technical claim that there are elections.
Take a look at the latest electoral antics from the ruling Congress Party:

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/guj-polls-cong-meticulously-plotting-to-dethrone-modi/183402/on

http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=772594

Now they're promising free homes to people who'll vote against the opposition party. They're handing out "registration forms" which carry no legal weight whatsoever, in an attempt to target the most vulnerable and gullible sections of society.

The ruling party at the Centre has committed itself to using any means, by hook or by crook, no matter how foul, to defeat political opponents. The day isn't far off when they'll be kidnapping opponents and physically eliminating them.

India is no longer a democracy - it's now just a dictatorship punctuated by elections.

http://business-standard.com/india/news/made-inusa-is-back-as-google-doesretro/478854/

Looks like Business Standard Syndicates it from NY Times

Well, lately getting a work visa seems to be quite hard nowadays, and European and Indian companies have complained that US really doesn't want to grant visas on basis of domestic policy, and citizenship is totally different thing. It is not signing the guestbook - not the hardest thing to do on earth but on the hard side.

India has 1.14 billion people - and the area is smaller too. Both have done a decent job so far at reducing slums and poverty given their restraints. So how come China needs to censor the Internet and remove freedom of expression when India is more or less ok with it?

The 55 people are safe and have returned to work, and this is suspected to be sabotage ("intentionally added to water cooler") with an investigation launched http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/internal-sabotage-behind-radiation-leak-at-kaiga/378095/

Got any links to online sources? I could use a good laugh to pass around at the office...

The original article that gave me that chuckle is long buried I fear, but it's not alone. I like this one, for example, out of New Delhi:

"China has the potential but India has the edge" says Nasscom Vice-President, Ameet Nivsarkar. He adds: "Clients of Indian outsourcing vendors simply expect more out of the services. This has led Indian vendors to set up base in places like China."

link here

The UK and Europe as well as the USA will never EVER see this car.

Actually there are going to be versions for the European marker
- here.

UPS is profitable. I think they might have a few trucks....and, oh by the way, rail companies are doing really well as well.

UPS is trading at a 5-year low. UPS is struggling horribly right now. You are out of your mind if you think UPS is glad that oil prices went so high. Learn Rail companies are doing well, but that is because the trucking industry is in crisis

If you think commodities are where it's at, go ahead and lose your shirt investing in them. Global demand is going down for the next few years and commodities are already crashing

From what I have been reading, it looks to me like the situation may be even worse in the UK and Australia than in the USA. Although I don't know if the UK and Australia have anything like the USA work visa scam.

These are all recent articles:

Barclays to cut 1,800 U.K. IT staffers in offshoring move
> "London-based Barclays PLC today disclosed plans to offshore 1,800 of the 2,800 IT jobs at its U.K. operations to locations in Singapore, Hungary and India over the next three years."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=outsourcing&articleId=9110183&taxonomyId=60

Oz bank to offshore 400 IT jobs to India
> "National Australia Bank is expected to send another 400 information technology jobs to India by the end of the year."
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=10&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=41867

Aviva sells offshoring operations to WNS for 115 mln pounds
> "LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Aviva Plc. said it has sold its offshoring operations to India-based outsourcing services provider WNS Holdings Ltd. for 115 million pounds in cash."
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=10&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=41867

More bank jobs move to India
> "THE National Australia Bank could more than halve its local technology workforce over the next five years, as it sends jobs offshore as part of its massive technology transformation program, codenamed Neos."
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24020156-15306,00.html

Make the most of IT
> "US versus UK"
> "Bank of America or Citigroup have done a significant amount of offshoring. But three insurance companies, including Aviva in the UK, have offshored 15 per cent each or more of their work."
> "In the US, no company has offshored over 7 per cent of their work. Headcount-wise, US companies may have a lead, but in terms of the quantum of work, the UK companies have demonstrated far greater amount of offshoring."
http://sify.com/finance/it-bpo/fullstory.php?id=14715010

Seems that the UK and Australia also get the same BS hype:

Offshoring to India creates jobs in U.K.
> "Outsourcing work by British companies to India does not cause job losses but boosts employment, according to a research by economists at the University of Nottingham."
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/11/stories/2008071156181700.htm

From what I have been reading, it looks to me like the situation may be even worse in the UK and Australia than in the USA. Although I don't know if the UK and Australia have anything like the USA work visa scam.

These are all recent articles:

Barclays to cut 1,800 U.K. IT staffers in offshoring move
> "London-based Barclays PLC today disclosed plans to offshore 1,800 of the 2,800 IT jobs at its U.K. operations to locations in Singapore, Hungary and India over the next three years."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=outsourcing&articleId=9110183&taxonomyId=60

Oz bank to offshore 400 IT jobs to India
> "National Australia Bank is expected to send another 400 information technology jobs to India by the end of the year."
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=10&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=41867

Aviva sells offshoring operations to WNS for 115 mln pounds
> "LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Aviva Plc. said it has sold its offshoring operations to India-based outsourcing services provider WNS Holdings Ltd. for 115 million pounds in cash."
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=10&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=41867

More bank jobs move to India
> "THE National Australia Bank could more than halve its local technology workforce over the next five years, as it sends jobs offshore as part of its massive technology transformation program, codenamed Neos."
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24020156-15306,00.html

Make the most of IT
> "US versus UK"
> "Bank of America or Citigroup have done a significant amount of offshoring. But three insurance companies, including Aviva in the UK, have offshored 15 per cent each or more of their work."
> "In the US, no company has offshored over 7 per cent of their work. Headcount-wise, US companies may have a lead, but in terms of the quantum of work, the UK companies have demonstrated far greater amount of offshoring."
http://sify.com/finance/it-bpo/fullstory.php?id=14715010

Seems that the UK and Australia also get the same BS hype:

Offshoring to India creates jobs in U.K.
> "Outsourcing work by British companies to India does not cause job losses but boosts employment, according to a research by economists at the University of Nottingham."
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/11/stories/2008071156181700.htm

It costs 12000 (less than 350 US$... Thought the TFA reports it 13990, The price tag I saw was Rs 12000 in their outlets.).

India's Business Standard reports that the Indian Government is mulling the switch to ODF. Can't wait...

People who waste their time on trendy non-issues like this make me sick.

Nonissue? People dying from an allergic reaction is a nonissue?

There are people dying RIGHT NOW from actual problems in the food industry with handling, inspection

These are handling and sanitation issues and don't have anything to do with genetic engineering. GE does nothing for preventing food from being contaminated. And for people without enough to eat, that's a problem with politics and logistics. Take Zimbabwe, it used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. But when pres Mugabe forced the white farmers off of their farms then gave the farms to his cronies the country turned into a basket case. Then there's what's happening in Mexico. Because of massive subsidies the US gives to US agribusinesses these companies can export food to Mexico and sale it there cheaper than Mexican farmers can grow food. You can blame this on many of those "illegal immigrants" in the US. Because Mexican farmers can't make a living on their farms they migrate into the Mexican cities or north to come to the US. And those who go to the cities drive those already there north. Massive farm subsidies was the reason the WTO talks in Geneva fell apart. India and other coutries demanded the EU, Japan, and the US to stop subidizing their agribusinesses so these companies couldn't flood export markets with food that cost less than what local farmers could grow food for. In India thousands of farmers have been committing suicide in part because they can't compeat with subsidized imported food.

This one is from Bill's India Visit, which he concluded yesterday:

Do you see any threat to Microsoft from companies like Yahoo! and Google which have entered the software market?

The software space always has new companies coming into the domain and for the first time people seem to underestimate Microsoft. It is healthy competition and it is good to be underestimated once in a while.

Full Interview Here

Gates said he had had dinner with Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso on Friday, and had met several Commissioners at the Davos get-together of the world's business leaders. He plans to meet other Commissioners in Brussels on Tuesday, he said.

"While I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision," Fiorina said a statement. "HP is a great company, and I wish all the people of HP much success in the future."

There have been other shakeups in personel at HP leading to speculation that there is something wrong. You have to wonder if all the animosity she accrued while making the HP/Compaq merger happen has finally been returned.

I think those numbers might be in Indian Rupees. There are about 45 Rupees to the dollar.

http://www.business-standard.com/today/story.asp?s tory=10195

This is a good start

Haryana(State in India) signs pact with Sun Microsystems
The Haryana government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Sun Microsystems to adopt open source office productivity tool, the StarOffice 7, for departments and educational institutions.

Linux may carve out bigger niche in desktop PC market
On Feb. 4, it announced the sale of 10,000 copies of its StarOffice desktop suite to United India Insurance, one of India's largest insurers. StarOffice can run on Windows or Linux desktop PCs. Sun aims next to persuade United India to replace 10,000 Windows PCs with Linux-based Java Desktop PCs.

Dear Friends,

Developed Superpower consider these Dang countries as great markets to exploit. These countries are not only providing the cheap labour but also the value added quality and IP through R & D which is ofcourse very much valuable. A lay man may consider these countries as rivals and nusiance but believe me it's no fun seeing the developed nations patenting traditional knowledge of these countries and not able to withstand them as competitors and treating them as dumb consumers only. There is same sentiment here against Coke, Pepsi and all the junk food chains who are passing on gas and obesity by cultivating the junk habits here. But we have to understand one thing that - yes there are certain problems and hiccups but business is always a two-way process. Developed nations cannot say that they are being milked and robbed, remeber you are extracing much more at a cheper cost and with better quality -

Read this from Business-Standard (India)

Rubbishing the core need for offshoring as saving costs, a survey by The Capco Institute states: "The current era of belt tightening adds even more impetus to saving costs as the overwhelming reason for offshoring, although respondents make clear that this assumes at least equivalent quality and 41 per cent list improving quality as a driver."

All this gains more significance for India as nearly 89 per cent of the global financial institutions who are offshoring their processes to India have reported satisfaction levels, while achieving cost savings of 40-50 per cent.

Furthermore, 61 per cent of participants experienced quality improvements, with 39 per cent finding quality the same.

Economic integration does cause temporary displacement of workers in certain jobs, but eventually it benefits both the 'donor' country as well as the 'receiving' country by raising living standards in both. Thus, while the displacement that took place in manufacturing is now being mirrored in service industries, we must have faith in the service sector's ability to reinvent itself."

oh really? "In India even internet service providers (ISPs) have got address space (referred to as Class-C addresses) that provide them only about 250 addresses to distribute to their multiple residential and corporate customers."

This change will not change until we start outsourcing the two political parties.
They are!
The US Republican Party now has a band of young and enthusiastic fund-raisers in Noida and Gurgaon, India

"If there is unauthorized access to our network, it opens us up to potential security and privacy vulnerabilities," Gurry said. In fact, there is a yet undisclosed security flaw in Microsoft's IM network and clients, she said.

Because of this unknown flaw, Microsoft is forcing users of several older versions of its own MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger clients to upgrade to newer versions. Users that have to upgrade have been alerted via e-mail and will soon start to see notifications in their Messenger client, according to Microsoft.

Same story, different decade. There are bugs in the older versions of the product, but the newest version purports to fix these problems. The newest version costs money. Repeat ad nauseum. You can see this in a variety of Microsoft products; for instance: Windows NT has bugs, but is no longer being supported; users are urged to upgrade to Windows 2000 or newer. Maybe this is a bad example, since NT is fairly old, so I'll toss a few more in for good measure.

Internet Explorer 6.0 SP-1 is the last standalone version of IE; subsequent versions will be built into future versions of Windows. IE6's support of CSS2 doesn't come close to Opera 7.x's, which makes it all the more difficult to develop for it according to the W3's specs. I'm sure CSS2 will be fully supported, and CSS3 halfassedly supported, in the next WindowsIE version, though.

Visual Studio .NET 2003, the 2nd generation of the .NET development IDE, still has bugs that have been around since the first version went gold more than a year. This includes one major usability bug, which reformats one's code when toggling between Design (~WYSIWYG) and HTML (raw code) views: an idea most definitely borrowed from Frontpage. And yet, they claim this feature is too tightly integrated into the application to be fixed in this version -- BUT it will most definitely be addressed in the next version of VS.NET.

I like Microsoft products -- from both an end-user and developer standpoint, they're easy to figure out, well documented and suit a variety of my needs (gaming, programming, researching & shopping). But there's a fundamental problem with allowing any company to escape accountability for the problems it foists upon those who would deign to use it, in the guise of a EULA. Maybe it's time to take more drastics steps to change this kind of behavior.

Unfortunately, the MD5 checking won't lead us to the core of SCO's complaints. After reading this inteview, it seems that they claim IP rights to all licensed derivatives of SysV, not just their "ancient" codebase.

That is, they say their license agreements w/ IBM, Sun, etc. give them control over the bits in AIX, Solaris, etc. that were developed by the licensee. So it seems that if IBM develops a special memory locking scheme for AIX then shares it with linux, SCO still claims a violation even though they played no part in developing the code.

Here is the relevant comment:

When we take a top-tier view of the amount of code showing up inside of Linux today that is either directly related to our Unix System 5 that we directly own or is related to one of our flavors of Unix that we have derivative works rights over--we don't necessarily own those flavors, but we have control rights over how that information gets disseminated--the amount is substantial. We're not talking about just lines of code; we're talking about entire programs. We're talking about hundred of thousands of lines of code.

Where people get a little confused is when they think of SCO Unix as just the Unix that runs the cash register at McDonalds. We think of this as a tree. We have the tree trunk, with Unix System 5 running right down the middle of the trunk. That is our core ownership position on Unix.

Off the tree trunk, you have a number of branches, and these are the various flavors of Unix. HP-UX, IBM's AIX, Sun Solaris, Fujitsu, NEC--there are a number of flavors out there. SCO has a couple of flavors, too, called OpenServer and UnixWare. But don't confuse the branches with the trunk. The System 5 source code, that is really the area that gives us incredible rights, because it includes the control rights on the derivative works that branch off from that trunk.

And they say the GPL is viral!

Now I have no idea if this claim is true, if it's in the contract or if it's enforceable, but it make SCO's claims seem a little less bizarre.

CDAC of India already has developed 1T flops super computers based on SUN Ultrasparc-II cpus. The system has primary storage capacity of 5 TB. The communication backbone can be any of CDAC's own PARAMNet at a peak bandwidth of 50 MB/s bi-directional, Myrinet at 160 MB/s, ATM at 155/622 Mb/s, or Fast Ethernet.

Currently work is going on to make a 10T Flop grid across country linking all premiere research and educational institutes and industrial establishments.

They have done their groundwork beautifully well. They have been laying fiber optic all over the country, for quite a while, and have enormous clout. As an example, where other providers have so far been unsuccessful in getting govt. clearance for certain services in India, it looks like Reliance will not be having that problem.

Reliance is using existing technology customised for India, at the Indian Inst. of Technology Madras. Details here.

You have NO idea the way the demand for bandwidth for both voice and data is growing in India. Want figures? Find them here.

Do you know the proposed cost of deployment of RIL's telecom plan? You pay Rs.3000 initially ($60) and Rs.600 monthly ($12) you get the instrument and the service, but will have to service for a period of 3 years, as part of the Rs.600 will go towards your instrument. Just look at their pricing schemes.

In fact, pricing is one of the reasons why Reliance will succeed. Reason? They chose NOT to use GSM as the initial cost is high, but wanted to help atleast the middle class.

If you still are not convinced, goto Chaoszone, run by cygnusx. He has been keeping track of this for a long time, and has very interesting links on the current scenario and WHY this WILL work.

You are forgetting one very basic point. Yes, India has poverty to handle, but you do not solve it by denying all other technology, atleast that's what your attitude sounds like. There is a significant chunk of the middle class for whom the rates that reliance offers is EASILY affordable, and that comes to a significant portion of the population of a billion.

Read this interview with Mukesh Ambani. Forget quality, they'll see gold through quantity. And that is exactly what Reliance is banking on.

And as a geek, I sure as hell hope they do, am looking forward to getting one of their J2ME enabled thingys ;-)

I came across this excellent article in an Indian business newspaper discussing the economics behind the use of free software vs proprietary software in developing countries like India. It also touches upon the adoption of Linux in Madhya Pradesh. In a nutshell, the article presents a strong argument in favour of free software mainly from the economic standpoint.