I'm an Indian who grew up in India and *I* have a hard time understanding how anyone could like these movies either!:-)
Things are improving though; I just hope I don't live to see the day when Kaama-jvalith Dvip (=='Island lit with sexual desire', a poetic-like Hindi translation of 'Pleasure Island') becomes the most watched show on Indian television!
Besides, I searched for a few days on Kazaa, but was never able to grab a copy of the film; didn't mind paying that US$3 as an experiment.
I wonder if I was the only person to laugh at the irony of seeing "Supari" after paying supaari (== 'extortion money' in Mumbai's gangster slang) to watch a DRM-enabled file. Not to mention that Kazaa's reputation isn't exactly over-the-board.:-)
This has been commented upon for quite some time now in the Indian media, but the revenue base of Bollywood (that is *Hindi* movies; not Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali or other Indian movie industries) has shifted to the overseas market for quite some time now.
The reality is that Bollywood earns far more from outside India than within. This is not just because all revenue is in dollars (and not rupees), but also because the government doesn't tax all that forex earnings. Besides, those homesick non-resident Indians will lop up any mindless crap belted out by Film-istan, so the people who make movies don't really have to move out of their bright-sets-with-characters-in-black-and-white paradigm; they only have to continue making it more shiny and more masala-driven.
(Which is why the big thing in Hindi movies these days is films with ex-pat content; in a year that saw 200 or so film releases, I can think of exactly one film set in the Great Indian Hindi Heartland up north. Something that never happens with the regional language movies, incidentally.)
So while you're correct in your assessment that film producers think India will be unaffected, it would be incorrect to say that its core market will be unaffected. For good or bad, Bollywood's focus has already crossed the seas.
Actually, and this is the funny part, one of the main reasons for Bollywood's popularity is that it doesn't show kissing and sex on screen; 'conservative' audiences in SE Asia, North Africa and the Middle East apparently prefer hints of kissing as opposed to actual displays of kissing. Or something like that.
Not to support censorship in any way, though; I think it's stupid.
My first mod parent up post, coz I was going to post just that.:-D
As with anything Booker, the value of Vernon God Little isn't in its story, which, was actually pretty childish. Rather, it was in the narration and characterisation; you begin to understand small-town Texas even if you've never been there.
India actually has one of the largest foreign-born worker populations in the world, mostly low-skilled labour from neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal etc. There are also sizeable ex-pat communities from Africa, Iran and other places in the Middle East.
In India call centre workers get paid more than fully qualified doctors
Unlikely. You're forgetting that there's a big boom in the Indian healthcare industry as well.
If anything can be said of this outsourcing trend it's that it's going to bring India kicking and screaming into the First World.
Business Week might hype the Great Indian Outsourcing "boom", and for sure, it is indeed very promising for my country, but the reality is that it still is barely a blip in terms of numbers. A greater percent of my nation's GDP comes from agriculture and other stuff.
Also, India's great big challenge is not just decreasing poverty levels, which have already fallen by 50% in the last decade, but introducing governance reform; there is, for instance, no reason why the national road network should be so bad, or why there's so much filth in urban India's streets.
Not to say we shouldn't be focussing on outsourcing, just that it would be extremely naive to believe that India will step into the so-called First World with it alone. A lot more can be done to improve the quality of life of most Indians.
or even if he doesn't, this has probably already been discussed here by now, but as a CS major who will be graduating in another few days (thank you, thank you), I have to ask:- does anyone know why he's pursuing an MBA?
I mean, the article seems to suggest that he'll jump back into kernel development and not take a management job after his MBA.
Must say, that's an interesting viewpoint, mainly because we seem to be having a HUGE debate on labour reform back in India. One of the many points of contention are, you guessed it, our existing labour laws.
The difference is probably lost for people who use the Roman script exclusively, but is obvious to native speakers of Brahmi-influenced languages such as Sanskrit, Hindi, Telugu, Burmese etc. Explaining pronounciation on an online forum is always difficult, but here's a try.
The Pittsburghese 'anat' probably rhymes with 'a rat', and 'man' is pronounced as, well, man.
The Sanskrit 'anatman', rightfully written as 'anAtman~' or 'anaatman~' under the Rice Transliteration Scheme, has a stress for the 'a' before the 't', and no stress for the 'a' after 'm'. 'T' itself is pronounced as in 'thimble'.
The two have very different pronounciations. Most bilingual speakers would probably consider them to be two completely dissimilar words that co-incidentally could be written the same Roman spelling. Personally, I'd spell it as 'anaatman' to emphasise the stress on 'a' I was talking about earlier.
Note the edges of the screen people, how did the display become so square, while the screen itself isn't?
Even more blatant, why should the phone have an oval outerlid that would, apparently, only shows a grey box-like icon?
As you can see from this case itself, your solution wouldn't have caught this dupe. The earlier link was from a press release, while this one's from Washington Times.
Still,/. editors could have acknowledged the earlier story before posting it to the front page.
Interestingly enough, the real question seems to be insurance; guy has no insurance cover for tagging his plane along on a ship. Also, there were a few comments here suggesting that he was taking a Great Circle "short-cut" while flying over the Antarctic; he wasn't, he was only trying to be the first man ever to fly over the South Pole on a homemade plane. Or whatever.
And oh, he has time only till (next?) Thursday to decide, or face spending Christmas and the New Year there.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm an Indian who grew up in India and *I* have a hard time understanding how anyone could like these movies either! :-)
Things are improving though; I just hope I don't live to see the day when Kaama-jvalith Dvip (=='Island lit with sexual desire', a poetic-like Hindi translation of 'Pleasure Island') becomes the most watched show on Indian television!
Heck, the guy even had Mukkadar ka Sikandar (that's a 70's movie for those who don't know) for download.
Besides, I searched for a few days on Kazaa, but was never able to grab a copy of the film; didn't mind paying that US$3 as an experiment.
I wonder if I was the only person to laugh at the irony of seeing "Supari" after paying supaari (== 'extortion money' in Mumbai's gangster slang) to watch a DRM-enabled file. Not to mention that Kazaa's reputation isn't exactly over-the-board. :-)
The reality is that Bollywood earns far more from outside India than within. This is not just because all revenue is in dollars (and not rupees), but also because the government doesn't tax all that forex earnings. Besides, those homesick non-resident Indians will lop up any mindless crap belted out by Film-istan, so the people who make movies don't really have to move out of their bright-sets-with-characters-in-black-and-white paradigm; they only have to continue making it more shiny and more masala-driven.
(Which is why the big thing in Hindi movies these days is films with ex-pat content; in a year that saw 200 or so film releases, I can think of exactly one film set in the Great Indian Hindi Heartland up north. Something that never happens with the regional language movies, incidentally.)
So while you're correct in your assessment that film producers think India will be unaffected, it would be incorrect to say that its core market will be unaffected. For good or bad, Bollywood's focus has already crossed the seas.
Not to support censorship in any way, though; I think it's stupid.
Wait till Diwali comes!
Sorry to spoil it for you, but both universes merge towards the end.
As with anything Booker, the value of Vernon God Little isn't in its story, which, was actually pretty childish. Rather, it was in the narration and characterisation; you begin to understand small-town Texas even if you've never been there.
India actually has one of the largest foreign-born worker populations in the world, mostly low-skilled labour from neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal etc. There are also sizeable ex-pat communities from Africa, Iran and other places in the Middle East.
Also, India's great big challenge is not just decreasing poverty levels, which have already fallen by 50% in the last decade, but introducing governance reform; there is, for instance, no reason why the national road network should be so bad, or why there's so much filth in urban India's streets.
Not to say we shouldn't be focussing on outsourcing, just that it would be extremely naive to believe that India will step into the so-called First World with it alone. A lot more can be done to improve the quality of life of most Indians.
I mean, the article seems to suggest that he'll jump back into kernel development and not take a management job after his MBA.
Must say, that's an interesting viewpoint, mainly because we seem to be having a HUGE debate on labour reform back in India. One of the many points of contention are, you guessed it, our existing labour laws.
The Pittsburghese 'anat' probably rhymes with 'a rat', and 'man' is pronounced as, well, man.
The Sanskrit 'anatman', rightfully written as 'anAtman~' or 'anaatman~' under the Rice Transliteration Scheme, has a stress for the 'a' before the 't', and no stress for the 'a' after 'm'. 'T' itself is pronounced as in 'thimble'.
The two have very different pronounciations. Most bilingual speakers would probably consider them to be two completely dissimilar words that co-incidentally could be written the same Roman spelling. Personally, I'd spell it as 'anaatman' to emphasise the stress on 'a' I was talking about earlier.
Didn't mention it specifically coz thought it was trivially obvious. :-)
Note the edges of the screen people, how did the display become so square, while the screen itself isn't? Even more blatant, why should the phone have an oval outerlid that would, apparently, only shows a grey box-like icon?
Something's not quite right here, methinks.
The point is still valid. How long will it be before we see this on Mong Kok's night market?
That's on the other corner of the Sahara Desert. :-)
You want to look at OperaShow then. Ppt-like presentation through standards-compliant HTML.
All you need to do is to port it to Xbox, make some cool case mods and presto, the uberest boxen in all of geekdom!
Still, /. editors could have acknowledged the earlier story before posting it to the front page.
Poor sod, missed it by three days! :-)
Interestingly enough, the real question seems to be insurance; guy has no insurance cover for tagging his plane along on a ship. Also, there were a few comments here suggesting that he was taking a Great Circle "short-cut" while flying over the Antarctic; he wasn't, he was only trying to be the first man ever to fly over the South Pole on a homemade plane. Or whatever.
And oh, he has time only till (next?) Thursday to decide, or face spending Christmas and the New Year there.
May be we could re-gift the object in question to ourselves first, before re-re-gifting it to others.
Guess not. :-)
(Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Your comment looks too much like ascii art.)