Statistics isnt everything...

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Benjamin Disraeli.

There was an interesting article on statistics that I happened to pass by. It was statistically proved that "People who own black cars happen to be in more accidents than others". Now, some people will let them go or have a laugh about it, some may even get offended. This is the problem. Statistics arent usually given by people who are real statisticians or explain the numbers. They just say, that this study by so and so, has come up with such and such statistics. Why should a person who happens to listen to it, has to even accept it even if the numbers werent explained at all? Do you get it?

Well, I can come up with an assumption that people who use black cars may be mostly young and may be involved with accidents. Statistics are like lampposts, you can lean on them, but they dont give much light. Who knows what should be the reality.

Also, since people get appealed with statistics, there is a greater possibility that statistics are made up. As it goes by the famous proverb:

"Statistics are of two kinds, one is the kind you look up and one is the kind you make up"

Statistics can be never true in all cases...

To Force A Fate...

A farmer's son need not end up being a farmer...
A lawyer's son need not end up being a lawyer...

While this is true, If the farmer's son decides to become a farmer, he comes up to the society with an inherited reputation. The very thing of living up to the expectations is a big deal.

The world of cricket, has produced a masterpiece in the name of Sachin Tendulkar. While the style of his cricket is absolutely unquestionable, it takes more than that. Things like attitude, passion, humility that he has exhibited these many days are more than anything that his offspring would also be expected to carry with him by default. Interesting Isn't it? :)

As Oscar Wilde has said:
“One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.”

Is Diaspora in the game?

Social networking has gone miles ahead and is now considered as an essential means of communication.

Facebook has redefined the way of communicating and knowing each other. Many like "MySpace" have also done it before, but the concept of "wall", "relationship status" and "whats in my mind?" has made it more interesting than any others.

People, corporates now view Facebook as a means of collaboration in the whole gamut of communications.

Well, Now to add to the list of social networking sites, "Diaspora" which is more open (open standard ) as of now is all set to redefine social networking, promising what others have failed to give yet.

An Article which talks about the same:
http://www.technologyreview.in/web/26904/page1/

Though the author talks about Diaspora as the one which is calm, segregative enough etc, I still will be eager to watch, how would the privacy promise, make a demanding appeal to the majority. Well it may, but would be really challenging.

Fingers crossed for Diaspora...

Carousel of Bigots...

Some people are of type "I believe what I believe, and I do not believe; that you do not believe the belief" :P

We have been trained to live with certain assumptions all throughout the life and we consider those as the axioms of the world. Its applicable to anything you may consider. For example, some may consider that their religion is the most superior, their race is more superior etc etc.

Professional life need not be different...
Its very much normal to be in a society of believers and non-believers.

It only remains in the approach of bigotry, that it may actually be used to advantage.

“The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer.”
-Albert Einstein

It can only be considered as a great thing to watch the believers view from nonbelievers eye and vice-versa but still to maintain your own perspective.

The secret worm 007

There may be lot of investigations going on and media might be aware of some, not aware of many, may have cooked some information in the process etc etc. We may never know the truth and we may not get some answers for many questions...
If I may just speak about one of the interesting part in the whole news of stuxnet, it is the use of technology. (On a side note, Fox News has given a good detailed article, which is another interesting thing :P).

Some of the interesting things from cyber security viewpoint:
1) Exploiting unknown vulnerabilities in the system, even the creator / developer of the system is unaware of.
2) Breaking an "air gap" system, by deploying the worm at a strategic place.
3) Adapting to changes in the security measures until attaining the target.
4) Destroying itself, without leaving evidence for cyber trace.

Though this looks like fiction, the secret worm 007 (created by group of people / organizations / countries / military) seem to have done it..

Where is the worm?

Everyman and 280 Lakh Crores...

"Everyman" is having a tough time to even count the number of zeroes in 280 Lakh Crores. He has never even thought that such a figure could exist.

 

"Dr. Evil tries to take over the world, with a new diabolical plan. He plans to use a "tractor beam" to crash a large meteor into the Earth unless he is paid a billion gazillion meelion dollars... " quoting from Austin Powers series...

As a matter of fact billion gazillion meelion dollars do exist..at swiss bank accounts..

 

Everyman thinks, If there is a rising pressure in disclosing the account holders and GOI is ready for such a move, swiss banks would file for bankruptcy soon and cayman islands bank will become rich...

That being a possibility, Everyman also thinks, If there is an effort to bring back 280 Lakh Crore, 279 Lakh Crore might vanish in the transit too.. (Travel from swiss to India should cost that much ??)

Everyman is not bothered about politicians / industrialists / whoever who did this, he is only bothered about what is going to be done with that money?

Should he be paying tax for the next 30 years?
Should he be paying charges for power / electricity?
Should he be paying for education?
Should he be paying for water?

At 24p

To remain in a group of like minded society keeps us powered up and also helps us to pay attention to details. My perspective of cinema is greatly influenced for similar reasons. I have had the privilege to travel from being a critic; to becoming an explorer, a learner and again being a critic sometime.

"A critic earns the right to analyze the merits and demerits of a film only when he has true understanding of the art. He must know and be able to judge every aspect of film-making, from writing the scenario to editing. In my view, a critic performs a useful purpose only when he is able to build a bridge between the director and the audience. That is his main responsibility."

-- Satyajit Ray

This quote is from his book "Speaking Of Films"...
Some may argue that cinema is no form of an art. If I consider it in a positive sense, I will look into it as "cinema is not only a form of an art; Its a culmination of art, science, imagination and much more..."

If you try to live by the words of the legend before looking into cinema; or try to make a movie by yourself, not only you start wearing a new glass to look into it, but will you become detail oriented too. You also get the benefit of learning the technology and management part of it...

"Naturally our films appeared lackluster in comparison, and it seemed that we still had a great deal to learn" 

 -- Satyajit Ray

At 2010 We may be improving; But, The world of 24p here, definitely needs to travel miles ahead...

I do not need iPhone!!

iPhone is no big deal... (Just wanted to start the post like this, just to make it sound that iPhone is not as cool as it may have been presented to the market and also to capture your attention)

Apple always comes up with deliberate shortening in supply, just to play with the market sentiment and increase the demand for their product to a higher level. Am not arguing, anything on their quality deliverable. Its a marketing gimmick.
Example : If 100% is needed, Apple satisfies 90% that moment. Its then advertises / make known to people that the demand for Apple product X is on greater demand. This increases the demand for product X to a greater + greater demand. To a common user, having an Apple product X becomes cool...

For markets like India, China, Brazil, Argentina; iPhone is still expensive. Also you do not get the latest and the greatest ones as do you get at US / UK. Well, the necessity for iPhone here is also not great. People here (mostly) buy for necessity than for luxury and try to get more value for every penny they spend. Enterprise users, may still prefer to use Blackberry, as it is great in inputting more data rather than just outputting / reading data. (Opinions may differ. Iam not an expert).
Apple is very much close ended. It doesn't allow anyone to break in and come up with major customizations, unless you would be ready to pay them. (Android is a open OS!!!)

Its also weird that iPhone Apps certification procedure is not clear cut. The documents that you get googling to look into the certification procedure is vague (not sure whether it is deliberately made that way). Apple also puts a clause that, accepting or rejecting an app, is under sole discretion of Apple and they need not explain "why an app is rejected?".. (Well, Apple is a big guy, and I guess, they should have lot of people who can be assigned to this job, if their is not someone available already..). Their are also apps available that makes no sense at all.
1) Fat Burner V2.0 - Download this app, put it on top of your belly, work the app, the phone starts to vibrate and apparently is supposed to burn your fat.. :-o (Still Amazing is, it has Version 2.0 :-P)
2) Iam Rich - Just download this app for $1000, have it on your iPhone to show you are rich.. :-o (I guess Apple removed it off late)

Android is still more open... If the right vendor is available, Android mobile would be the right choice.. :-)

cartoons and cartoonists

Day to Day happenings in a software corporation/ sometimes political and governmental, can no well be represented than is done in Dilbert. I always feel that anything expressed in images with few sentences in a conversational format catches the memory immediately. Cartoons / any sort of animations are good inventions in the visual communications area. And characters play a very special role.

Cartoons are great in communicating messages very clearly and precisely. One who is my favourite in this area of creating cartoons which deliver meaning and appeal to general public is cartoonist Madan. Not sure how many would have heard about him .

"Geekandpoke" is another such place to find amazing cartoons. I have always found it interesting. Login to try it out.

Am open ears to listen to any of your suggestions on following similar other websites / cartoons / cartoonists which you think might be interesting too ...

chinese martial arts movies

Think of Martial Arts -- You will think about Chinese movie...

Chinese Martial Arts movie may not be that bad (Is there a pun / no pun in what I say?).
Unless you know chinese (cantonese / mandarin) you might not understand what the character speaks in the movie. Well for these kind of movies, you really do not need to understand the language though.. ;-) You very well understand the movie otherwise..

The concept in these movies are kind of weird... Its flying style kungfu, drunken style kungfu, dancing style kungfu, magical kungfu and what not.??
"Martial arts" have a good place in market. People buy the idea of it.
As an effort to make it more acceptable, it gets dubbed in English to reach worldwide audience. These movies are also dubbed in regional languages like Hindi, Tamil, Marathi,Punjabi etc to attract the local audience... and gets telecasted in couple of the TV channels, as 8PM movie shows...

Its worth noticing that the concept of rigorous exercise, standing upside down, stricter chinese government, shaolin temple etc etc gets sold too ;-) (Ex: Lengend of Red Dragon -- starring Jet Li)

It is also known that actual information subsides / gets lost in translation...
Changing the dialogues to suit the local slang, customising the dialogues to new generation audience, is what the movie distributors do to make it more appealing...
If you actually watch these movies in regional language (and have the patience to continue to watch), you will have a good laugh at it...if nothing else...
L-Cube (Laughter Lengthens Life)

Idea of Compensating Differential

Just as I was reading through the definition of "Compensating Differential" today, I was wondering how would this really work?

Wiki says: "Compensating differential is a term used in labor economics to analyze the relation between the wage rate and the unpleasantness, risk, or other undesirable attributes of a particular job. A compensating differential, which is also called a compensating wage differential or an equalizing difference, is defined as the additional amount of income that a given worker must be offered in order to motivate them to accept a given undesirable job, relative to other jobs that worker could perform. One can also speak of the compensating differential for an especially desirable job, or one that provides special benefits, but in this case the differential would be negative: that is, a given worker would be willing to accept a lower wage for an especially desirable job, relative to other jobs."

If this works, then the next time when you need a pay hike, tell your supervisor, that the job you are doing is undesirable... Would you be paid more? :P

Attention Span Of a Rodent

It all actually started with "How can a common joe feel empowered?" and "Selling Progress to this generation". Generation is mentioned here, not to address any specific age group. Its everyone who is by far living in the same time and year.

This generation has a very bad attention disorder (should I include me?..Anyhow thats not the point)

Lets consider, Mumbai attacks (2008) that took place recently for instance. The good part was media covered that the people of Mumbai were able to go ahead with their regular life the very next day of the attack. But, on further thought, Does it not look like that people forget everything instantaneously. (Am not arguing here whether that was the right thing..)

People do crib about lot of things /politics / infrastructure and do not do any further on the same and just go ahead with their life...

So..Why do people now, have an attention span of a rodent? Does he not bother? Or Does he quit bothering?

When some common joe tries to do something about solving the issues, which may for example be doing his best contribution in terms of money or service, approaching a collector or minister, the latter is more interested in clicking a picture with him rather than using him for any efficient purpose.. Let go the common man, this does happen to celebrities too. hahah...

How can he be empowered? Leaders of this generation (not the politicians, not the administrative function, but the education institutions and sensible media group) should shove this into the common man's throat by increasing his attention span...

Interesting Blogging Statistics :-)

Blogging is a very powerful tool to express your thoughts and say "Hello World". Their are millions of blogs available and the people / countries contributing to it are displayed in the chart...

Whats the purpose to display the statistics?
It gives a more meaningful approach to why do I want to blog. Try and add into the pool of bloggers..I guess :-P

Why have I come here?
This piece of interesting statistic along with the cool looking pie chart shows that people are interested to look into blogs (Money, fame, technical, political, sports, news, weather, research, stocks, current affairs, social networking, blogging, health, food, business, family, friends, fame, travel, leisure, adventure, life and what not...)... I decide, I will contribute my part to it, trying to add value to the blogging community. I hope my posts make an appeal to you and can change the way we live... REVOLUTIONISE... :-)

Who Am I?
The About Me section will explain a bit... Iam here, to enjoy blogging, express my view on world, to know your thoughts on my views... Its going to be a mirror that I would look into. Your encouraging and healthy contributions are much appreciated..

What Am I going to do different here?
I would try and talk about worldly views from my perspective, provide facts, encourage constructive comments, try and add value to the society... (I will also have guest bloggers in here who can entertain and impress you with their talks)...

Whats my blog about?
Varied.. Posts will address different and varied audience.. Will label my blogs appropriately as possible..

Whats next?
Start Blogging...:-)