Recently in In my opinion Category

Firstly, who needs to be motivated / inspired ?

In my humble opinion, almost EVERYBODY needs motivation or inspiration to keep going with life.. there might only be differences in whether it is SOMETHING or SOMEONE that motivates a person.

By design:
I think it is by design that human brain needs 'reasoning' to be able to do something or think something.. which is given by motivation.. and this motivation might sometimes come from the inner self itself.. like being motivated to jump out of the 68th floor of the world trade center if it is under terrorist attack, for living through the situation.

And then comes the question, how important is it to be motivated?

If there is dire need to find a vaccine for HIV, a capable scientist would need no other motivation to invent one.. while another scientist might be motivated with some huge pharamaceutical bonus in the pipeline if there was a vaccine.

Without motivation, all these people might still be working on the vaccine, but not as good as with some kind of motivation.

The more the motivation or inspiration, the more better the brain gets satisfied that it achieving what is to be done is indeed important.

Well, you should be wondering why on earth suddenly I am motivated to write this on my blog.. simply because I read some interesting blogs and was guilty there was no update for a long time on my blog. No, that doesn't mean, you have wasted time reading this.. Here are some ideas if you go depressed, or go bored about something that you can help your brain with some motivation.

1. If you are a techie, nothing better than reading about other techie achievements, latest gadjets, learning to program something weird and new, etc.,

2. If you are business guy, nothing better than buying yourself some nice gadjet to help yourselves.

3. if you are a simple guy with simple needs in life, I think you should motivate yourself to be a bigger than simple guy.. may be starting with reading some autobiographies of people who achieved big things coming from simple backgrounds.

ok, whoever you are, I hope you dont have to read something like 'Win in 6 steps', 'Success in 21 days', 'How to become a millionaire in 101 ways' etc.,

For everybody: Some interesting videos like those you find at http://TED.com might just do it.

Finally, I have fully moved to using windows vista from xp for... everything.. from development, to blogging at home, to browsing the internet... and I am happy I made this shift soo much later after vista arrived (what a couple of YEARS back already!!).

The shift to vista, more than anything else, becomes more safer an OS for me to rely on these days, after going through all kinds of childish viruses.. if they were intelligent viruses atleast i would have had nice time trying to find a fix.. but these childish viruses would come in through a weakness of firefox or internet explorer, write some dlls on my laptop, overwrite explorer.exe to create those dlls everytime explorer.exe did anything.. and what for all this.. just to make more channels open, close firewall blocks, disable antivirus .. to just have fun having taken over some space on my laptop..

other than that the writers of those viruses achieved nothing.. typically nothing.. i didnt lose any files, i could even work normal offline, and only when i connected to internet they used my internet bandwidth to spread making my laptop a host.. again all that for nothing, but just to go to another system or a usb key, or a cd written.. on my system. Children who learn software try all this, trying to disable something and say 'wow my code shutdown the computer' like stuff when they learn new programming areas.. and get happy about the *achievement*.

so, with vista's security features, which is like even if you open a program on your laptop, vista will ask did u try to open this to verify security.. the childish safety issues which eat up a looot of productive time is now secured.. but only for now.. i think with simple modifications in the code of those children.. even the 'did you want to run this program' request could be avoided or already answered programmatically.. and the children will be back.

anyways.. giving me back my productive time... and for sometime allowing me to not bother about the best way to block children viruses.. which is installing a personal firewall managed by me with a password on my laptop.. and allowing or blocking each and every port and request on the computer .. this would be pain to do.. so i am happy that i don't have to do this for sometime.

also, i think Microsoft is fully focussing on supporting vista and malware affecting vista or program updates and security updates for vista.. so much that .. I really see a lot of windows update items available every now and then when my laptop automatically checks, which is far more than what windows update items or frequency of updates are available for windows xp off late..

Vista, in the US costs close to 50$ if I am right.. and with a decent firewall + antivirus like AVG/ mcAfee internet suites.. for a few extra bucks.. should be all that is neccessary for a pain-free internet access laptop.

Why a firewall.. windows firewall is easy to hack.. Microsoft has clear specs and allows programmatic control of windos firewall which a hacking program can easily manage without your knowledge.

Though those 'Do you want to run this program', 'Did you try to open network properties, if yes, press continue' are frustrating.. I think this is going to be the order of the day hereafter on windows OSes, and that should be good news for MAC-OS or linux based systems which are at present less vulnerable to viruses or hacking..

We have heard every year the story of how: The Indian Railways have been turned into a profitable organization from a subsidized organization that too making more than 2000 crores in profit, because of Laloo Prasad Yadav.. who has contemplated heavy before (and still) on getting some university to hand him over a Doctorate.

But what is the truth in it.. Numbers shown in balance sheets are more so becoming unreal after each economic recession when companies which have shown big numbers every year suddenly seem to fall off the line or if they manage to stick on they remove 'Tissue paper' from their monthly purchase orders to cut costs.

So, are there similarities like Enron, satyam in Indian railways, or are they really making that money ?

I guess they do make the money, though some of the numbers might be exxagerated.. but they are definitely making the money at the cost of "NOT upgrading" any or all of the services, cleanliness at stations, helping commuters with city or town transport into-outof railway stations.. and importantly without upgrading the rail systems and ticketing systems itself.

It is 2009, and India is still fore-seeing its first bullet train far away in 2015. Better services or food / toilet / waiting room facilities in railway stations is still a long or even unforeseen dream. All you can do today is go 15 mins early to catch the train and get out of the train in a station and hurry out of the station in 15 mins.. If you try to look for waiting rooms, night-sacks, nice clean toilets, or even a decent honest commute to somewhere and back, you are going to find all things that are wrong with the railways.

Recently I went 1 hr early to send off my fiance at the station. She was going from chennai to hyderabad. We found rats, we found so much dirty linen strewn around, no dustbins at regular distances along the platform, biscuit wrappers and coffee cups strewn around as if there was just some shooting in the station and everybody threw it all off and ran.. it was so much so dirty, abandoned, .. and the proper word would be "UNCARED FOR"..

At one instance I was seeing an fully plush A/C coach just standing on the dirties rail tracks possible on earth... with shit, rats, some sewage too, all on the track... definitely smelling something so bad but I wasn't feeling it because probably we Indians are all used to such smells always.

Anybody, who had a few bucks more, and travels to other countries in the world, would prefer to avoid going by train because of these more than for the sake of a sign of status. I was thinking so already to save money for travelling by flights rather than go to such places and get demotivated and un-attitudinal.

It is by allowing all these "uncared for" stuff that the railways is making its money and showing off in the centers of governance as an achievement.

Indian premier league .. or IPL, considered the big daddy of all marketing campaigns for the sport, had its links with indian politics and politicians from day one.

And Indian politics in general has always mixed with cricket.

We have seen one or more politicians becoming chairmen of the Board of control for cricket in India
We have seen politicians making selections for the cricket team. etc.,

While we were wondering what we haven't seen yet in cricket... the Indian ministry of Home affairs, a totally government body run by politicians, is involving itself in the scheduling of the IPL. Not just ad-hoc involvement... the home minister addresses a press-meet to announce possible dates for the IPL. If at least the sports minister did that, it would have been diplomatic.

Anyways,
Looks like the congress-led government at the centre, has more interest in IPL for political reasons, than for sports reasons... that is in the interest of getting people glued to IPL a happy thing, and have people busy thinking whether rajasthan royals will win or super kings will win..
and finally vote for congress again in the coming polls (april -may) .. forgetting congress's handling of '26/11 mumbai attacks' or 'nuclear deal'

Already we know that the congress diverted attention of the nation from the alarming inflation rates, by making the nuclear deal drama.. which the CPI-M really wasted their time on and severed ties with congress.

End of day, both IPL and politics exist for the money and the power they can generate from people.. who cares what people become... and no wonder they are united. But are we people united in anything that stands against us? right from questioning why the women's bill can never be passed, or an anti-corruption bill never taken up. Does going to the voting booth all that we can do.. ??

You are in India, and whichever news channel or newspaper you try, you see one thing big .. Indian politicians mulling over the nuclear deal that they signed with America. They signed it and then they stopped doing anything about it.. That should firstly give Americans some sign as to how to trust India next times when anything is signed.

Anyway, coming to the real part. .. Firstly, I suggest you ignore the drama the Indian politicians are doing with this nuclear deal thing. Yes, DRAMA.. you got it right.. they are not **really** really talking the deal, neither is the prime minister Dr.Manmohan sign a very positive person trying to do something good for India. It is all happening because, they want the country and importantly the country's media diverted from all gross problems in India today..

Gross problems from were we are being diverted:

1. Inflation is in two digits and strongly rising and seems to be steady for long at the higher mark.. never happened before.

2. The stock market made some uncalculated bullishness after the present government came to power and fiddled with something in the market. Everyone kept on diverting saying it is because India is really growing very fast economically.. and now the obvious BIG crash happened.. everybody outside India and many politicians and a few people who knew about all the eye-wash and brain-wash made loooot of money in this.... last time it happened they made a scape goat of a stock broker Harshad Mehta and bundled every other problem on him and put him in jail for many years. .. this time they are trying all means to divert attention so the truth about many billion India rupees never comes out.

3. Petrol prices are uphill.. and though the government can reduce some taxes on it and help the people, they want to continue making the money in taxes without any any consideration for helping all Indians at large.

4. Real estate prices are exhorbitant, because none of the government control authorities on the prices are working, because if prices increase fast and quick, the government gets lot of money in taxes quite quick.

These are some of the problems that you and I are made to divert from, so we don't discuss it, talk it, voice it, protest it.. and the government and most Indian politicians in power today seem to be more interested in the benefit of people outside the country by helping them make more and more money in India, rather than helping Indians live. Capitalism is fine, but not to do it outright when nothing in the country is ready for it immediately except the Software industry.

So, are you still diverted into the artificial Nuclear deal chaos, and still thinking Dr.Manmohan sign is trying to do something for the country.