So Kaavya Viswanathan got caught, leaving the respected publishers red-faced. What can be done to prevent such incidents in the future ? How about using Google Book Search to check that the text has not been lifted from somewhere ? Sorry .. that is not possible: the publishers are against google. Too bad…
PGSEM interview results are out. I got an offer for admission. Classes starting June 23rd, will be held every Friday and Saturday for the next two-and-half years.
In case someone wants advice/help/tips/answers-to-questions on PGSEM, or is wondering what this is all about, please join the yahoo group.
There is a debate raging elsewhere on whether employees are most valuable for firms, or customers. I have not gone through the entire discussion, but most entries seemed to be for either one of the two.
My take on this would be - neither. In The Goal, Professor Goldratt has mentioned that the primary goal of an organization is to earn money. This would make the most important stakeholder, for any firm, to be its promoters and shareholders.
Most people might not be as blunt as Professor Goldratt, but the machinations of any organisation do, on close scrutiny, affirm this belief. During a recession, for example, what would a company considering employees or customers most valuable do ?
- The Pro-Employee camp would probably believe in making sure that the employees are not “inconvenienced” - no layoffs, minimal pay cuts, business as usual - after all, aren’t the employees their most prized asset?
- The pro-customer camp, on the other hand, would make sure that the customers continue getting value-added products, and services. If the customers cannot pay for these? Reduce prices ? Give it away for free ? Anything to keep the customers, no matter what happens to the balance sheet ?
A more pragmatic approach would be to make sure that the financial health of the organization is not harmed to the best possible extent. This might mean pay cuts, products not being agressively marketed or even rolled out, customers being politely refused - but in the end, the firm would live to see another day.
This is not to say that the first two groups are not valuable or that they are unnecessary. Both are equally important for the long term success of any organization, and every organization should - especially in the current global environment - provide the best of facilities and opportunies to both the employees and customers. It is just that playing a game of “Which is more important” is futile.
Thoughts ?
The Bangalore Edition of BarCamp is going to be held this Saturday (21st April) at Yahoo’s Golf Link Campus. It is going to be an “unconference” with around 30 sessions on geek (NOT necessarily tech) topics ranging from Web 2.0 to Social behavioural patterns on Online communities to whatever the participants are interested in.
There are a large number of participants who are also involved in startups, and it would be a nice opportunity to interact with them !
Seth Godin spoke at google, about google. Watch the video here.
More later ..
Google has lanched its calendar service, much like Yahoo’s - but ofcourse, with its trademark simplicity, dynamic UI, and added features. Some of the key highlights :
- Ability to share Calendars with the world
- Multiple calendars per account
- Calendars can be overlaid into a single display, so that you can schedule across multiple calendars
- Natural language processing - Allows you to ass an appointment using simple english - for eg: “Breakfast at MTR at 5 AM”
- And of course, slick UI !
The standard of Indian journalism and news channels scaled new heights today, with the “Breaking News” and endlessly-repeating-feature of the day being Mallika Sherawat’s endorsement of the 7up brand.
It is amazing how all these news channels can keep airing such kind of news, hour after hour, when there are much more important things which should be brought to the notice of the public. Sadly, all channels are guilty of this lack of sensibility.
I do understand that in today’s world of cut-throat competition and 24-hour news consumption, no channel wants to be left behind in the race for more TRP’s. I also wonder whether I would do something different were I responsible for a media house.. I do hope I would !
Similar to the RHCE, LPIC-1 is the entry level certification for Ubuntu, announced by The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), a Linux certification organization, and Canonical Ltd., sponsor of Ubuntu.
The Computer-based test will be available from June, through Thomson Prometric and Pearson VUE testing centres around the world. The exam price is USD 100.
According to this article, a Swedish study indicates that prolonged cell usage increases the risk of brain tumor substantially.
This contradicts other studies by the Dutch and British, that did not find any harmful effects in the radiations from TV and Cell towers.
So, who is right ? I do not know, but keeping the cell usage to a minimum would not be a bad idea, both medically as well as financially 
Pandora is a free online personalised internet radio web site, which allows you to create “stations” based on a particular set of Songs/Bands that you want. It then adapts to the selection, and plays songs which possess the same characteristics - For example tone, beat, vocals. This is possible because these guys are busy classifying each song based on such technical characterstics, as part of the Music Genome Project. You can also mark songs that you especially like as they play - so that the intelligent application can play more of the kind, and mark songs which you do not want it to play again. You can also share stations, so that others can also listen to your kind of music.
Sounds a bit similar to Yahoo shoutcast, the difference being that the classification of songs based on the granular characteristics provides an entirely different way to find new music.
