Taking pride in oneself

Recently I was listening to a distinguished gentleman who spoke articulately about some problems with Indian culture and Indian mentality. In his own words

• Indians dont take pride in their own culture. They are blindly aping the western world. They never try to spread information about what was done to them, how British took over the country, how britishers came disguised as traders and then looted India.
  
  
• People (Indians in particular) who speak two or more different languages generally end up as jack of both language and master of neither.
  
  
• Indians lack creative writing skills. Its difficult to find an Indian who can speak articulately in Hindi for 15 mins. There are very few books being written in hindi these days and even though lot of people speak English, there are very few good authors or books written by them.
  
  
• Biggest problem in India are the politicians. Why not give everyone 1 crore rupees and tell them to go live peacefully on any place they want. Just leave this country ....
  
  
• Why doesnt Indian education system has mention of Indian people who made it big. In economics we dont talk about how Tata's, Birla's, Ambani's made it big. Why do we need to read about some random guy in timbaktoo who made it big. This makes a big difference in the kind of self esteem people have.
  
  
• People in India believe in working very hard, earning a lot, trying to come up with new innovative ways to save taxes and become ambanis. Then what? No one wants to take control of the situation and change it. Everyone knows there are inherently so many problems with the indian society right now, corruption being the most problematic. Rich people dont realize they are rich. They are just blindly running behind more MONEY.
  

That is only one side of the coin. The vedas were written in India. We had the likes of Tulsidas, Kabir and their counterpart might be difficult to find in any culture. But that was hundreds of years back. What do we have today? What do we lack - guts, conviction, self belief, vision. You need to realize you are blessed. One must realize his potential and contribute in whatever way he can.

Google's failed products

Needless to say, the biggest, largest and most profitable organization to affect everyone's life in the past few years has been GOOGLE. The single company that has shook the foundations of Microsoft.

Even though Google has been so succesful, they have had a few failures. Few of the products where Google could have done better were -
1. Orkut - The social networking site of Google. This network is very popular in Brazil and India. It has yet to make a mark in US/Europe. The few major problems this network has are:-
a. Server returns error (Bad donut)
b. Too slow
c. Still doesnt have the basic feature of deleting a friend.
d. Non-intuitive interface.

2. Googlesheets - Word, Excel sheets from Google. It never clicked. Its hard to come close to the standards set by M$. Star-office and Open office have also been doing remarkably well (neither Google nor M$ products.)

Author - Sharad

What should one do on new year :)

- Party (Disc/Pub/Eat-out/Random new yr party)
- Movie
- Hang around with friends (sit / eat / chat)
- Sit alone at home and watch tv/listen to music/read book
- Make stupid new year resolutions that you will never fulfill

Author - Sharad

Laptops

People frequently ask me which laptop/machine they should choose. I have created a broad categorization which will help all general people to select a machine for their usage.

Key factors to consider
1. Amount of moolah ($'s) you are are ready to shell out
2. Kind of work you intend to use it for (heavy processing, general web surfing and multimedia, gaming)
3. Portability (how often will you be carrying it from one place to other)


For IT Pro's, even though DELL might seem cheaper stick with Thinkpads / Macbooks :)

For normal desktop replacement and web-surfing and normal multimedia usage, these are my suggestions
1. DELL
2. Macbook
3. IBM
4. HP
5. Compaq
6. Fujitsu

Indian Stock Market

Whats going on behind this strange bull run in the Indian stock market? How do justify this sudden boom that has been going on for almost a year. Is it sustainable? Will the market crash leaving all thick n dry?

Author - Sharad

Questions people frequently ask

Author - Sharad

1. How to make my computer faster?

2. How to block/remove viruses from my computer?

3. My computer is very slow at startup, what to do?

4. What are the best softwares for editing pictures, arranging them, watching movies etc?

5. Which site/software should I use for ....

How long is the Web 2.0 bubble gonna last?

With all the latest acquiitions / crazy VC funding / social networks mushrooming in every nook and corner of the world, it seems imperative that we are on the verge of another IT bubble burst.

The last IT bubble (previous bubble burst of 2001) saw a lot of companies go down. A lot of water has flown under the thames ever since, but that doesnt change the present scenario.

Joseph had talked about the same thing a few months back when he was discussing the famous Techcrunch web-design issue (Trouble between Michael Arrington and his web-designer).

By - Sharad

Why start this

Just before christmas we decided to start this activity to have more fun and type some random stuff.