@rgumental @dvisor

Over the last one month, we've been inundated by wikileaks with all these 'top-secret' diplomatic cable communication records .. Of-course, some good aspects have come out like the true-pictures of prisoner abuse & related stories..But I've to say, bulk of this leaks is practically useless and to a great extent, undesirable.. I came across this link  http://www.ndtv.com/article/wikileaks%20%20revelations/wikileaks-cables-singapore-called-india-stupid-japan-a-big-fat-loser-72197    today... The headline screams  'Singapore called India stupid , Japan a big fat loser'... Now if you read through the story, you would see that its some diplomat who has expressed this opinion.. Its not the stance or official position of Singapore..its just an arbitrary opinion of a diplomat.. Now the media highlights it with a catchy tagline to get reader-base.. An average news reader will be easily enraged by these kind of stories if he happens to be on the receiving side.. I...

Its almost a day since the announcement came..Still the vuvuzelas are going on and on over here in Qatar..  An event thats going to happen after 12 years means that much for the common man here.. Football has a greater purpose than being just a game.. If you look across the world, you would not find anything else that unites people more than soccer.. Cutting across religion, politics and races, soccer is perhaps the greatest unifying spirit of mankind.. By taking World Cup into unchartered territories like Russia & Qatar, Fifa has done the right thing-- bring more people under this unifying force.. Its a beautiful time to be in Qatar... Its much more than just hosting a tournament.. Its about bringing unprecedented development & world-wide visibility to the Middle East.. Its about bringing together a region that has been ravaged by conflicts for quite long.. Its about unifying people..I hope I can come back here in 2022 to see some matches :)

Post marriage, wife has been threatening me with dire consequences if I don't write about her in my blog.. Now, I have to admit, I thought Students' Council @ K was the ultimate lesson in diplomacy.. But again, I've been proved wrong.. Bachelors over there, marriage will teach you diplomacy at its best.. Some nuggets of diplomacy .. At marriage reception --------------------- She : (Introducing someone to me ) This is xyx ( name )  my aunt's nephew's cousin's ... Me: Oh hi.. How you doing.. Nice to meet you.. (post 5 minutes ) She: Hey, u remember xyz Me: Huh!! Which xyz ?? She: #$%^#% - This happens both ways.. so, not much of a problem.. you tend to meet 100s of relatives.. you remember barely 10 of them.. At a shopping mall ------------------- She:- Does this top look beautiful ? Me:-  Yes yes.. ( Have to say, there is no alternative answer to this) - This doesn't end there.. this goes for multiple iterations.. And I've spent a disprop...

No..No.. Its not an expletive :) .. On the other hand, this Monday(15-Nov) could be a day when email communication gets redefined again.. Last time it happened was when G-Mail was announced in 2003-04.. And as per lot of  reports, Facebook might be coming up with a mail system.. News Links -  http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16599333?source=most_emailed -  http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/facebook-gmail-titan/ -  http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/13/youve-got-fmail/ -  http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/10/facebook-november-event/

When people told Qatar is full of mallus, I really didn't expect this much.. My usual intro conversation with a new person whom I meet here Me: Naam kya hain ? Stranger : Eh !! Me: Name ? Stranger: Eh!! Me: Perentha ? Stranger : Oh..peraano chodichathu ... Peru ... xyzz Now I've started talking straightaway in Malayalam Near the place where I stay in Doha, there is a Kerala inter-district football  tournament going on.. I've to say that the level of competition that I see in that is much higher than what is usually seen at Calicut in any of the leagues .. Some snaps from that The Penalty :)

While I was studying engineering, there was a huge fan-following towards this Open-Source / Open Standards in technology.. I guess thats still there.. Microsoft is/was seen as the villain.. Linux was the holy grail of computer science folks.. 6-8 years have passed by after that .. Now, the villain is Apple , with its tightly controlled iOs,Appstore ecosystem.. And the perceived open-angel is Google with its Android ecosystem. Steve Jobs in his various interviews and talks insists a profound point about this open-ness. "Ultimately customers are not bothered about whether the product is open or not..They are bothered about the experience with the product"... There is this nice NYTimes article that I came across recently.. They are comparing the Mac-Windows phase with iPhone-Android 'battle' now. In the quest for perfection in experience, Apple has largely kept a close-knit system. In the quest for economies of scale, Android has taken a lot of manufacturers into it...

     I've realized something of late.. I live in extremes.. I'm either extremely professional or a totally lazy guy.. I'm either extremely competitive in some cases, whereas in others I really don't bother to raise even an effort..I'm either emotionally dead ( which many people have accused me of ) or i'm an emotional wreck in rarest of the rare situations.. I'm either very calm & composed or  i'm extremely frustrated... A subject either interests me a lot or it just doesn't go anywhere near me...   I don't belong to anywhere in between..    The problem in being in extremes is that when you are in one extreme, even  in situations which require the opposite extreme behavior, you tend to fluster... Its very tough for me to strike a middle path. There is a property of extremes because of which this middle path is extremely difficult..Typically if you take a pair of contrasting extremes, one extreme ( say, extreme A)  would mean you e...

  There's this interesting joke that I came across in Seeking-Alpha " Intel bought McAfee because the bloatware that McAfee sells is second biggest driving force for CPU upgrades after Windows. And CPU upgrades are good for business at Intel"           Its a strange acquisition in many senses.. Intel paid a huge premium ( 60% premium @ $48 per share in an all cash deal worth $ 7.7 billion in cash ).. Never heard of a tech-acquisition that big in recent times.. Even the big buys made by Oracle were a mix of cash & share options. So, what made Intel buy McAfee which runs a seemingly unrelated business of anti-virus & security software ?          To understand this in a better way, there was this interesting debate between Steve Jobs @ Apple vs Adobe..It was over the unsuitability of flash for iphone..The letter by Jobs is still given on Apple site  .. A lot of points in this debate are on open vs clos...

There is a lot of noise being made about Mamata Banerjee's common rally along with the Maoists.Left & BJP are equally vociferous in criticizing her..I'm no Trinamool supporter either, however I find the development actually positive I'm an eternal optimist when it comes to Indian politics. Somehow the belief that system will work out well in the long run is entrenched in me. During my first year @ IIMK, I was exposed to an amazing course called Social Transformation of India taken by A F Mathew. It exposed us to the grim realities of Rural India and why people take up arms as a means to end desperation..  Arms struggle is not a viable option in long term..Neither will it work in a well informed & increasingly well connected world.. The growing assimilation of Maoists in Nepal to the mainstream politics in a pointer to that. I've a feeling that even the Maoists in India are realizing the futility of an armed campaign outside their comfort zone..In Economics ter...

I read an amusing argument in a World Cup news section of some paper - "Since 1962, European teams & Latin American teams have won the world cup alternately. Going by that logic, it'll be Brazil or Argentina this time" .. About 2 - 3 years, I might have been swayed by these kind of arguments, however, after reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness , I tend to be amused by these kind of predictions..    There are different kind of predictions. One type of predictors just give out their bets / premonitions..Second one, you just do a set of data analysis, find some pattern and make your bet based on that..If you win, you tend to develop a self-belief in your logic, which might not have any rational basis.. You never tend to realize that you have made a correct bet just out of randomness, rather than any strength in the underlying logic.. A lot of stock market bets are again like that..You tend to observe a set of past events , make some generalizations ...

     When someone makes a very flashy statement , it quickly catches the imagination of the public..News sites repeat it again and again because of its sensationalist value..If you read in general about the global financial industry, this statement wouldn't have missed you last week -  " When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else's house and then committing  arson ".. A very catchy statement made as an accusation against Goldman Sachs recently..However if you dig a bit deep into this extremely interesting case, you would find that this statement is metaphorically wrong to be used in this context. At the heart of this entire quagmire is this structured financial product called 'Synthetic CDO's' .It actually seems to be like a gambling instrument.Player A thinks that a particular market ( in this case the housing mortgage market ) will tank. He thinks that he can profit out of...

Doesn't these two people have an uncanny resemblance ? The first time when I saw Morkel play for CSK, I was just wondering did they contract Ballack for a celebrity status..  The similarity appears even more striking when seen on Television

Last month's Google Analytics reports on my blog gives me this interesting keyword search stat.. Satan worship in Kerala   ( 18 visits ) Satanic worship in Kerala   ( 8 visits ) devil worship in Kerala      ( 4 visits ) Satan worship in Cochin     (4 visits ) Satan worshippers in Kerala ( 2 visits ) ...and some more with one hit each In total about 40 Devil related keyword searches reached my blog last month.. I had written once from a technical perspective on this  http://ajithprasadb.blogspot.com/2009/10/keywords-psychology-computer-science.html .. But wondering what's the reason behind this sudden spike in interest with devil among Mallus.. Is it because of exam season or something ? Any rational explanations ?                                                              ...

When I came over here at IIMK, I never thought I would have a 2 year stint like this.. I'm someone who had stayed away from practically anything other than Acads during my undergrad.. Infact 70% of the students at NITC would have been in some Ragam committee or other...but i've never been in one over my entire 4 year stay over there. With such a background behind me, I found myself in the thick of all activities over here.. Got elected into Students' Council couple of months after I came here..and after that it has been an enriching ( & extremely difficult at times) life.. It has been a stint that taught me a lot.. In many situations my way of thinking has changed a lot because of this.. Words can never describe these, but I'll give a few examples to Illustrate.. * Often, an average Indian has a high tendency to blame the govt / authorities / whoever who is in charge for lot of issues that he's facing.. Like, he'll say electricity supply is breaking d...