The biggest problem in IIT Bombay - Authorities !

What I speak below is more relevant to IIT Bombay per se, but I know of similar instances / rules in all other IITs. To some extent people higher up the chain are always short-sighted?

Even though I am an alumnus of IIT Bombay now and technically should be least concerned about the state of affairs there, the recent news of proposed Internet restriction had me ROTFL ! Hats off to the super-brainy authorities who leave no stone unturned to make the life of students a living hell. Compulsory attendance (attending 80% of the classes is compulsory; as if  we were part of a jail), ban on usage of vechiles, curbs on PAF, technical and cultural fests and now the ban on internet usage are some of their most mind-blowing rules/ decisions / laws. 

I had been following the debate on IIT Bombay's internal mailing groups and was just a spectator. I have been a part of the system and I very well know that all cries of students are gonna end on deaf ears. They believe that overall student performance is going down, research output of IIT's is not at par with other world renowned univs and instead if looking at other means, they believe enforcing attendance and pulling the plug on internet is gonna do the trick for them. The authorities could not take a step let alone raise an issue when the so called stupid, illiterate, uneducated politicians took the decision of imposing quota (just for the sake of their vote banks).

I fail to understand - Why the authorities had to take it, at all? They had no vote banks to cater (ok fine ! These institutes are govt. funded and they cant do without it ) Why do authorities think that it's a problem at student's end at the first place? Why cant the autocratic rules be blamed? Why cant teaching be more fun? Why does a student feel forced to attend some classes and will go to others even without someone reminding him? The difference is great scientists not necessarily make great teachers. Professors maybe exceptional in their field but I for sure knew many sample ones who didnt knew how to speak loudly enough to be heard by the entire class, leave alone how to teach properly. Anyways, all this for some other time.

More -
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India - The other side of the coin

I don't know how to interpret these numbers, but every time someone starts talking about India's economic growth and its rapid development, my mind wanders on to these numbers.

Lets start with some solid demographic facts and numbers -

Population: 1,095,351,995 (July 2006 est.)
Literacy : 59.5% (source)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate : 0.9% (2005 est.)
HIV/AIDS - People living with HIV/AIDS : 5.7 million (2005 est.) (source)

Rural electrification - Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Uttranchal, West Bengal etc are some of the states where significant number (more than 10%) of villages are yet to be electrified.

• Number of Villages (1991 Census) - 5,93,732
  
• Villages Electrified (30 May 2006) - 4,39,502
  
• Village level Electrification % - 74%
  
• Number of Rural households (2001 Census) - 138,271,559
  
• Electricity Access - 60,180,685
  
• Rural Household level Electrification % - 44%
  (source)

Some people read (something that media portrays) and start believing that small villages in India have Internet and have their own websites . The facts are very different. Villages don't even have proper drinking water, forget about electricity / computers / internet. Something similar posted on Gigaom. There are number of villages in India where problems range from no proper drinking water,no roads to no electricity and no health facilities.

Tribune had a excellent series of articles on India: The Tasks Ahead. The authors have very articulately written about the problems with India's governance model, how agriculture can start a new economic revolution, en powering women, judicial independence, fighting corruption, health of nation etc.

The point of bringing out these numbers is simply to highlight the fact that everything needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. We as Indians might have achieved phenomenal economic success and development rates, there are still many areas where we need to pull up our socks.

Banking services in US

I just noticed a pretty big business oppurtunity / problem with the banking services. I have a bank account with ABC. A few days back I opened a bank account with some other bank XYZ (hoping for better services). I initiated a bank to bank trasnfer from ABC to XYZ. I was informed that the transfer could take anything between 1-3 days. The money was deducted from my ABC account on the 2 day ie. today, but that money didnt show up in my account in XYZ. The transaction is still shown under "Pending" in XYZ. Technically the money has just vanished and I dont have it in any of my accounts.

I see this as a very big potential business oppurtunity. Either of the banks could have put my transaction on a hold for a day and since its still not the 3rd day, they can always safely say that in this case the transaction took 3 days. The key point to note is that one of the banks has my money but still hasnt upgraded my account status. If hundred's of such transactions were happening every day (which I am sure do happen), the bank stands to have a phenomenal amount of money at hand, on which they dont need to pay any interest but can play around with that money :-). You can potentially do day-trading and make huge profits.

The other point being that is so obvious - a problem for a normal consumer / customer. Why does a bank to bank transfer take 3 days in this so called Internet age? Well I know banking services in US are pathetic to say the least, but that does not mean that customers can be taken for a ride ! At times I cant believe that I am actually in US and the kind of services being offered are accepted by people. Seems to me as if I am living in 19th century. Some more minor samples of banking services that I have witnessed firsthand are -

• A (intra city) wire transfer took more than 3 days.
• Banks charge fees for incoming wire transfers (even in India I didnt pay for that)
• Cheques are not always free. (The only service so called banks provide is happily take your money and laugh on you)
• Your account is not free if you cant maintain a minimum balance or make direct deposits.

Google woes continue - Now its google news!

Google's problem never seem to stop. Earlier I wrote about Orkut and Gmail security bug. Now its the google news site that is behaving erratically. Its extremely slow and is skipping sections of news. This image shows one such shot where it decided to skip everything. If you are also noticing such behavior, please let me know.

Google's problem... continues

There is a lot of noise regarding a security flaw in gmail. In case you still dont know, Gmail had a major security flaw which allowed anonymous sites to steal your contact list. CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery as it is called) attacks are very similar to XSS. Read more on ajaxian.

A few of the other previous problems with Google that have been discussed briefly on techcrunch are -
Google Notebook: Use the Privacy Option
Gmail Disaster: Reports Of Mass Email Deletions
Google Top Searches: Based on Everything and Nothing
Google’s Orkut Down For 13+ Hours
Google’s Tipping PointAnother Gmail Problem

Author - Sharad