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The US and Australia are actually leading the way in renewable energy production. Google and Apple just went 100% renewable with their energy use. Other US companies are looking do the same

Individual companies aren't a good guide for what is happening. In this case, government policy matters a lot. It is true that Australia has a boom in solar power, but that's despite the current government https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/feb/11/australias-solar-power-boom-could-almost-double-capacity-in-a-year-analysts-say https://www.marketforces.org.au/campaigns/ffs/ not because of it. And in many respects Austarlian coal plants are producing all sorts of pollutants that wouldn't even be allowed in most of China https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/15/australian-coal-power-pollution-would-be-illegal-in-us-europe-and-china-report.

On the other hand China and India are ordering more coal plants be built than any other counties. China is taking a look at scaling back coal use but still major cities in China are simply unfit to live in because of pollution.

It is true that China and India are building new coal plants also, but that's only a fraction of their new grid production. In fact, Chinese cities have become substantially cleaner in the last few years https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-beijing-insight/beijing-may-be-starting-to-win-its-battle-against-smog-idUSKBN1EN0ZJ.

Africa is scheduled to become major problem in the next ten years too as more power is needed to provide for their growing economies. Coal is the only source of fuel for Africa that is cheap enough for them to exploit.

Actually, there are a lot of solar projects in parts of Africa also. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/the-race-to-solar-power-africa, but if you note in the comment you are replying to, I specifically included a link to the Solar Electric Light Fund; as I explained in that comment, it is particularly important to help get solar panels for Africa precisely so they don't turn to fossil fuels. So if you are concerned about Africa's fossil fuel production, then by all means donate to SELF.

Fun fact: Nokia had a mobile payment system back in 2010, which was wildly successful in India and was about to be launched in other developing countries. Yet, they shut it down in 2012. Guess why? Because that service was compatible with Nokia's own systems - S40, Symbian, Meego - but not with shitty Windows Phone!

Ah, I guess a moderator doesn't believe the post. Exclusivity is big business.

India has a 74% literacy rate and the average Indian spends 5 years in school (source: http://www.thehindubusinesslin... ). That's not something for Americans to envy. You only meet the lucky few Indians who got the very best education.

Huh, I didn't know about this. Now I wish I could edit my original post.

I just did a few Google searches. Results:

J2ME:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Micro_Edition

Feature phone apps are big business in India (article from 2011):
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/info-tech/feature-phone-apps-the-buzz-grew-louder-this-year/article2749955.ece

Facebook just spent $16 billion for a company that produced J2ME apps:
http://www.ictworks.org/2014/02/21/a-16-billion-dollar-future-in-feature-phone-app-development/

So I guess the term "feature phone" and the term "smartphone" are fuzzier than I thought. The more a phone looks like an iPhone or Android phone, the more it is a "smartphone" I guess.

Indian elephants learn the tones of a language (or tone pattern)
Elephants are big business in India. They are trucked all the way from East (Assam) to the South (Kerala) in India. The only problem is that these places speak different languages. Usually elephants can obey pretty detailed commands like "pick this palm frond from here and carry it home with you" (so that they can be fed), based on the tone of the voice. It is extremely common for transported elephants to get confused and run amok.
Even worse, elephants in Assam are taught to frolic in water, while in Kerala they are bathed by mahouts. Results in utter confusion when an Assamese elephant goes to a crowded bathing ghat and starts jumping about, with the mahouts running behind the elephant with scrubbers in their hands.

zeppelins got nothing on space-poo: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/science/mars-mission-to-use-astronaut-feces-as-radiation-shield/article4471834.ece

So many things wrong with you said. First off, your economic growth is over 5% now, but has been around 10% for most of the last decade.
Secondly, India exports far more to USA, than USA exports to India. And that has been going on for the last decade. As such, your money should be strengthening against the dollar, not getting weaker. Yet, you can see that that with that ithe rupee against the yuan has gone in the right direction (i.e. when China imports more into your nation, the yuan should strengthen, which it does), while USA's money has strengthened against yours. That is backwards from where it should be. If India allows it to free flow, then the rupee will strengthen against the dollar because of so much one-sided trade.

India is manipulating their money against America, just like China does. And they do it to gain an advantage with the programmers.

I am glad and jelous that you guys are even having these conversations, I am from a country where they put a gilr in lockup for her facebook post for criticizing the government - http://m.thehindubusinessline.com/news/facebook-post-row-police-to-drop-all-charges-against-girls/article4147120.ece/ This is a country where it is assumed that bribing is the only way to get your job done, it is assumed that the police are goons and without any self respect, we pay one of the highest taxes in the world and we dont even get a road, it is assumed that the person with the biggest stick always win and the election is just a scam.

Right, and it absolutely, positively has nothing to do with diwali. Move along, move along. Blame Harry Potter!

Sacrificing a species into extinction... Did India learn nothing from the Ilwrath?

The summary says they are being gifted by parents.

Of course this tells a whole different story. I think it's far more likely these birds are being slaughtered for Diwali than being gifted as Harry Potter toys o_0

Right, and it absolutely, positively has nothing to do with diwali. Move along, move along. Blame Harry Potter!

Bristol-Meyer-Squibb - a new york company getting federal help: http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/taxol/

novartis (not even a US company) benefitted from US gov money while developing imatinib:
http://medicynic.com/2008/03/04/generics-on-the-rise-get-glivec-gleevec-in-india/
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/01/26/stories/2006012601150500.htm

Here is some reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh-Dole_Act - look specifically at the ritonavir section

Definitely not trolling, but missing the mark. The drugs only cost that much in the US - the rest of the world gets fairly fair prices from US/non-US pharma companies benefiting (sometimes indirectly) from US government funding.

Woman's brain is wired differently

Quote: "There is some disparity in the 'matter' too, related to cognitive functioning in the brain. Women have more white matter and men have more grey matter, the authors state.

White matter connects brain centres in the neural network; grey matter tends to localise brain activity into a single active brain centre.

As a result, "women tend to often be able to make crucial connections between widely disparate elements that men don't make; simultaneously, men tend to task-focus on one element or pattern without distraction better than women do"." (emphasis mine)

Too lazy to grab more evidence.

CC.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss any concerns about the negative effects of cellular phone usage or the microwave radiation.

There have been studies which have shown changes in the expression of proteins due to microwave radiation.

http://www.mobiledia.com/news/65142.html

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2007/aug2007_report_cellphone_radiation_01.htm

Other studies have indicated that there is a link between increased microwave radiation and the dramatic decrease in the population of sparrows.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/bline/2003/12/01/stories/2003120100431400.htm/

Looks like it's Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. This article also mentions that the roll out is supposed to happen by 2010. The weird thing is that the city of Mumbai in Maharashtra is serviced by another telecom company MTNL and not BSNL. I wonder if it will be covered by this WiMax network.

India has had more sophisticated parking solutions than this. There are multi-level parking buildings, where one has to drive in a car into an elevator, lock it, and then the elevator would put the car in an available slot. Once you are back, the car can be retrieved from that slot, and ready for you to depart. All this for less than 50 cents an hour.

There are buildings which have car parks and motor cycle parking lots on the terrace, and use elevators to transfer the vehicles to the terrace.

Multiple news reports about the multi-level parking solutions could be found here.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/03/07/stories/2007030703420500.htm
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2002/03/28/stories/2002032801021900.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/39396831.cms

India has had more sophisticated parking solutions than this. There are multi-level parking buildings, where one has to drive in a car into an elevator, lock it, and then the elevator would put the car in an available slot. Once you are back, the car can be retrieved from that slot, and ready for you to depart. All this for less than 50 cents an hour.

There are buildings which have car parks and motor cycle parking lots on the terrace, and use elevators to transfer the vehicles to the terrace.

Multiple news reports about the multi-level parking solutions could be found here.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/03/07/stories/2007030703420500.htm
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2002/03/28/stories/2002032801021900.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/39396831.cms

I spend several weeks in India last summer studying Jatropha.
  My wife's father S.W. Mensinkai founded University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad, near Hubli in Karnataka India (8 hrs by train north of Bangalore). He is considers the father of plant genetics in India. They are doing genetic engineering of Jatropha there.

See photo's
http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/images6/index.html

One of the programs they are pushing is for farmer to plant Jatropha on the borders of other crops in the fields, turns out the bulls that wonder freely in India will not go near the stuff, so a row of these trees keeps them out of the farmers crops.

Very interesting work.

I brought back a hand full of seeds with me, and planted them, but they didn't take, maybe the Airport X-ray scanners killed them.

Anyhow;
  Jatropha is related to the Castor bean plan that is responsible that the neurotoxin ricin is derived from.
  It also have a toxin called curcin that is similar to ricin.

  I don't know if burning Jatropha oil release this curcin toxin into the air?

  But apparently when it's pressed to get the Oil out, the curcin remains in the "Cake" this is the solids left behind after the seeds have all the oils squeezed out.

From: http://www.intox.org/databank/documents/plant/jatropha/jhast.htm
-------------
      2.5 Poisonous parts
                        All parts are considered toxic but in particular the seeds.
      2.6 Main toxins
                        Contains a purgative oil and a phytotoxin or toxalbumin
                        (curcin) similar to ricin in Ricinis.
------------

  Apparently Canola oil (Short for Canadian Oil)is a genetically modified Rape seed (in the mustard family) with the toxins removed.

  So if Jatropha had it's toxins removed through genetic modification it could also be a valuable food product.

Later in 2006 I moved to Santa Barbara and it turns out the first company in the US to start producing Jatropha Oils and Bio-Diesel was here in Santa Barbara. http://www.biodieselindustries.com/ They were even doing a project with the local High School to grow Jatropha.

Also Jatropha Oil is being use on the Indian Railways for some time too. I guess the plan is to plant Jatropha trees along the tracks, it keep the animals off the tracks and also since labor is very cheap, they would use the same trains to harvest the tree's for oil to power the trains.

One of the projects I was thinking of was to develop an engine optimized to run on Jatropha Oil.
More importantly these three wheeled auto-rickshaws (called Tuck Tucks in Thailand) all use the exact same engines, so the idea is to make a direct drop in engine for rickshaws. The rickshaws there are Two-stroke gas engines and are a major source of pollution there spewing clouds of choking soot behind them. Maybe some day.

More good links:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/10/20/stories/2005102002021100.htm
http://www.biodieseltechnologiesindia.com/
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/04/tnt_starts_biod.html

All I can say is that things have changed quite a bit from the 1980's. I was recently reading in the Pakistani press that Pakistan was placing an embargo on importing phones manufactured in India, and how that would increase the prices of telephones out there. Which, of course, let me wonder as to why the Pakistanis would be interested in importing those electrical bricks I remember from my childhood, those (cant remember the brand names) PSU-churned sets they used to hand out with every new line.

They weren't. They were talking about Nokia handsets.

Now, you might rightfully argue that Nokia, as a brand, isn't Indian, but look at it this way:- close to 25% of all the Nokia phones manufactured in India are exported. This in a country that's already the third largest market for Nokia.

In short, we've lost Indian brand-names, but have gained some world-class production capabilities.

How bad can the HRD funk up things? Well, there's some serious cause for optimism:- the PSU (public sector undertaking, for non-Indians) the article talks about, Semiconductor Complex, is owned by India's space agency, ISRO. Which may or may not mean much, but I wouldn't be too hasty in writing them off.

Good point!

I hadn't considered that aspect.

Doing a little diggingl:
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2002/04/01/sto ries/2002040101511200.htm
in 2001 it was 49 rupee to the dollar.

http://www.blonnet.com/forex/usd.htm
It is now about 44.5 rupees to the dollar.

It looks like the Rupee is appreciating against the dollar long term.

With a nickname like "Freedom India" you must be an objective source.

I'm also from India, and I'm not quite sure where you're getting your news.

Number Portability

This was merely recommended by the TRAI, not implemented - indeed, if I might quote from http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2003/11/19/sto ries/2003111900090900.htmthis article, number portability will only be introduced maybe in a year.

Secondly, there is no mandated one-rate, one-country. BSNL/MTNL (the nationalised phone company) introduced calls to any BSNL phone at Re. 1/min (1/40th of a dollar :-) ), but there was no compulsion on the governments part for the private companies to do so. An Economics 101 class will tell you why they decided to follow suit.

I'm all for taunting those poor people in the rest of the world about their call charges. However, ensure that you're truthful while doing so.

And, if you admire Bill Gates, you have a serious lack of ethics.

Though I will not include Bill Gates in the list of 'truly evil', some of the role models Indians consider are people of totally dubious background.

About 10-12 years back there was stock market crash in India engineered by loopholes-in-the-system+backdoor-deals by a rogue trader - Harshad Mehta.

I have seen many reports/articles/interviews where he was admired for his money making skills and quotes like 'I want to be like Harshad Mehta' with all the sincerity. For the last two/three decades there are very few socio-cultural icons in the subcontinent...the people who can be role models.

Unfortunately you biased view of India is about the same as your biased view of America. India's actual GDP is nearer $650b (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/01/24/st ories/2004012400690400.htm) based on the true exchange rait. (And as this is what Microsoft's figure will be based on it is a fairer comparison).

A 0.065%GDP investment my sound small, but it is not!

Come work in computer science, boys and girls! Why? Because you'll have an opportunity to experience first-hand the effect of offer and demand on the job market, when we at MS will lobby for an increase of H1B -- the ones for 2006 are already allocated.

Because since the industry is mostly managed by lawyers and MBA, not engineers, you in the tech field will never compete with us lawyers and sons of lawyers for these coveted positions of execs who get a raise at the same time techies are laid off.

Because in spite of all Bill Gates' public wailing for attracting talent, he spits on tech talent, and so do most CEOs. The only "talent" he cares really about is execs, especially sales and marketing execs. That's talent. Design? Programming? Architecture? A commodity at best. A cost to be outsourced.

And you wonder why there is such a decrease in engineering and science students? Of course they want to work in finance and law. Do you think they are stupid?

And MphasiS is the parent company of MsourcE (company from the previous article).

MphasiS buys out MsourcE

Seagate.
I used to like WD, but 5 years of waranty on even IDE drives? DAMN!

Well, lets see... Who is it that actually LIVES in nature, grows the food you eat and mines the resources for your daily living. Who breathes fresh air and toils to make an honest living?

You do know that food production and mining in the US are inherently and inescapably unprofitable when in direct competition with other regions in the world and survive only by the subsidies given to you by those "city slickers", don't you? A little gratitude to them for preserving your way of life would be in order I think.

It has been a year since version 6.2.
It has been almost 2 weeks since 6.3 was released and we get an entry in Announcements on /. now :)

vim, for the quick editor it is, doesn't deserve this delay.

If you check the wishlist for 7.0 you would be surprised to observe that support for embedding vim in another gui program is right up in the top slots with *none* voting against it.

It's good to see people actually agreeing upon something good

Did you know that 'vim' is a household name in India and its sales amount to more than Rs. 2500 millions!?! That vim here is a dishwashing bar to help ppl get away from "KitchenSink" faster is a different matter.

Looks like the European Community has already put the wheels in motion for this:

In 2000 the European Parliament "approved a directive that shifts responsibility for the environmental impact of a vehicle over its entire life cycle--from design to disposal--squarely onto the manufacturers' shoulders. Some requirements--a near-ban on the use of toxic heavy metals, and mandated recycling rates of 80% and 85% for cars going on the market after 2006 and 2015, respectively--are far-reaching but feasible."

Another story about BMW's efforts. There are lots more.

Well, there are large parts of Asia where motorcycling (or scooters) is a common thing like cars are in US. And out here, the biggest problems are not really what you mention.
7) and 1) are common enough but bikers are used to these and will just swerve around a pedestrian (or a car), road rules ignored.
The speeds that bikers hit are really low (top speed of the bikes mentioned in the link are something like 80 mph) so wet leaves or liquids on roads are not an issue except on real steep turns.
Deer no, but cows are common in India. But cows are predictable, they amble slowly in a straight line instead of running so are easy to avoid (cow bellies make for soft landings too :-) .Dogs run, but act sensibly, ie they dont freeze in the middle of the road, anyway you can run over a dog and not get killed (Indian dogs are smaller).
Yeah but you have to always keep and eye on the road, assume that everyone is trying to kill you and you are safe. I really dont want a HUD distracting me
Any US guy who has seen Indian/Asian traffic care to comment?

Unemployment in Bangalore is 10% source
A more recent source (thehindu.com) gives 10.5% for "urban youth" for Mar 2003, so I figure its still about the same. I can't find the engineering unemployment rate.

So what do they blame? Globalization

Funny how lack of barriers and "protections" are always perceived as the cause for unemployment, no matter which side of the barrier you are on. It's always the other guy's fault. If you want to stop H-1B's, please replace it with an increase in the quotas for citizens. I'd rather have those programmers and doctors as Americans, thank you.

...Bill Gates recent charity activity in India. Doing some much needed charity work, while cleaning up his image, and Microsoft's in turn. Here are relevant links here and there.