Anurag Jain's Blog
Thursday, July 29, 2004

'The 400 Blows' Screening at IIMB

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dress Circle welcomes you to this week's screening (Friday, July 30, 2004; 8.15pm; IIMB Auditorium). We invite you with your family and friends to a French movie this week. The details are given below. The synopsis of the movie will be available at http://spidi by evening.

Movie: The 400 Blows (Also known as 'Les quatre cents coups') (1959)
Awards: Best Director (Cannes, 1959); Best European Film (Bodil, 1960); Best Foriegn Language Film (NYFCC, 1959); Nominated for OSCAR & BAFTA
Genre: Crime/Drama
Direction and Writing credits: François Truffaut
Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud (as Antoine Doinel), Claire Maurier (as Gilberte Doinel, the Mother), Albert Rémy (as Julien Doinel), Guy Decomble (as 'Petite Feuille', the French teacher), Georges Flamant (as Mr. Bigey) and Patrick Auffray (as Rene)
Date: Friday, July 30, 2004
Timing: 8.15 pm
Venue: IIMB Auditorium
Runtime: 94 minutes (Approx.)
Language: French
Subtitles: Yes, English
Colour: No (B&W)
Sound Mix: Mono
Rating: Children below the age of 13 yrs must be accompanied by an adult.

Regards,
Dress-Circle
"Keep Watching"
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Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Protest rally on 6th aug at 6 pm at the music strip rock

enough is enough !!

A 'live band' today signifies a prostitution racket to the police and journalist fraternity and the efforts of musicians to share the joy of music with their audiences are treated with the attitude reserved for law breakers by our policemen To musicians who devote the best part of their lives to cultivating and playing music in a band, it is the ultimate insult .

The FREEDOM JAM, free music festival, an expression of Bangalore's musical traditions - an open stage where musicians of various genre's perform original music through the night to a receptive cosmopolitan audience of thousands on the eve of Independence day was stopped and the instruments of crime - music equipment - jailed on Independence day.

enough is enough.!!

it's time for music lovers to make their presence felt in this democracy we live in.

So if you believe in the freedom and the power of music please come over at 6 pm on Friday the 6th of Aug to the music strip rock behind Queen Vicky's statue in Cubbon park - the place where it all started back in the eighties and join in a protest parade down MG's promenade and represent our views to the members of the press and police - and if you have a message please feel free to express it anyway you would like-

We need to make a scene, to stop being taken for granted, so please forward this to any of your friends who might be sympathetic to the cause.

P.S. The venue and timing of the 8th annual FREEDOM JAM 2004, free music festival, will also be announced there. One of the important issues is to rally for official permission to play music through the night of Independence.
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Friday, July 23, 2004

Jets = Gliders?

Apparently, jets can glide when their fuel gets cut off due to some reasons! For details, read the following from a veteran pilot in an egroup I am a member of:

"Who said jets can't glide, everyone who knows anything about heavier than air flying machines knows that every aircraft can glide --- the distance one can glide will depend upon the aircrafts best glide ratio. How does one get to calculate the "best glide ratio" ?? Well take the L/D Ratio of the aircraft, lets say, the L/D is 15:1, or say 20:1 Reverse this figure and you get 1:15 or 1:20 , that is the glide ratio of that particular aircraft ---- so for 1 (One) mile of altitude you get a glide distance of 15 or 20 miles. Jets (Vampires) have been flying in India since the late forties (1948) , the aircraft had an L/D ratio of 20:1, so the best glide angle was 1:20 --- i.e. for every mile altitude (5280 feet = 1 ststute mile; 6080 feet = 1 nautical mile) the Vampire would glide 20 (twenty miles) Clean a/c, gear and flaps up at the best speed of 160 knots. So from 30,000 feet it could cover 100 miles. Now you have to consider the wind, with a tail wind fly the best glide speed, but with a headwind you must as a rule of thumb add the wind component to the Indicated airspeed and then fly the new speed. Ferrying a Vamp from Kanpur to Palam, in the winter, winds were approximately 300/60 - 80 Knots, the engine flamed out between Aligarh and Ghaziabad, and I just made it straight in to Palam's R/W 27. The Air Force teaches dead stick landings at all stages on all their fighters, they work a "high key" and a "low key" point, there have been hundreds of dead stick landings on all types. The longest "glide" by any aircraft is over 2,500 kilometers done over the Andes (South America) in February 2003.

Now if there is a "bearing failure" front or worse rear, then the glide takes on a whole new picture, the engine does'nt "windmill" freely, it feels as if the airbrakes, or landing gear has been extended ---- it will stil glide, but not nearly as far.

As far as Commercial aircraft are concerned, Air Canada had an incident in the very early '80's. The Company had been used to working fuel figures in Kilograms, they got new aircraft with fuel gauges in Pounds. From the computerised flight plan they loaded fuel as required, only reading the numbers in figures. Halfway through the flight the crew realised the error, they now had a critical condition. Both engines flamed out, radar guided them to an unused airfield on the shores of Lake Winipeg only to find the local aeromodelling club were having their annual competitions, anyway the field was cleared and the aircraft landed. Yes the Ram Air Turbine was the only source for their electrics, this aircraft, like many of the others, could not make use of the APU in flight, the APU doors were activated by the WOW switches (Weight on Wheels). Regarding the hydraulics --- provided the aircraft has not had a failure with consequent loss of all fluid, then the windmilling RPM from the engines is most often sufficient to lower the gear, flaps can be deployed electrically, but will be very slow going down, no reverse, emergency brakes --- dont pump them or you lose what is there.

The aircraft that flew 157 miles from 30,000 feet would possibly have had a very strong tailwind ----- 140 to 180 Westerly winds over the Pacific and US in the winter. Even the Airbus has a better than 11:1 L/D or 1:11 glide angle, but congrats to the pilot for remembering what he had learnt from his gliding experiences.

Methinks, that all pilots should fly gliders to hone their skills, and give them an awareness of what power there is in the sky above us. In India we have some of the best gliding conditions in the world; Standing Waves right across the Himalayas, strong thermals across the whole sub-continent, what we lack is the "Spirit of Adventure" --- we also expect to be spoonfed by the Government agencies.

Thanx for reading this far, had to answer some of the queeries that have been raised about this issue."
* L/D= Lift/Drag!! (and not Length/Diameter :)
* The Air Canada incident being talked about in the email is Gimli Glider incident (but for the experience pilot, it could have become Gimli Glider Accident)

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Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Random thoughts on Next Practices in IT

1) IT Management: Project Management practices
What will it be? Going chronologically, following is how s/w development at large scale has evolved -
- Centalized Collaborative Development - Popularized by Richard Stallman (Free Software).
- Decentalized Collaborative Development - Popularized by Linus Torvalds (Linux).
- Global Delivery Model (Highly coordinated collaborative Development) - Popularized by Infosys / Wipro etc.

Are the current software development/project management models good for foreseeable future? Will they be able to keep delivering? What could be the Next Practices in the area of s/w development/project management? Are there any new models in sight?

2) IT Business:From Outside Outsourcing to Inside Outsourcing: Addressing Domestic IT Market
Look at some of the following recent outsourcing deals in India:
Bharti-IBM deal ($750m!), Bank of India-HP, Dabur-Accenture.

Are Indian vendors neglecting booming business back home in their hot pursuit of business outside India (There are exceptions like all new "Yes Bank" which has decided to go for i-Flex solutions as their IT service provider)? Is there room for a new domestic-outsourcing oriented player?

Just random thoughts.

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Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Nirvana under /. tree

That was some big response from /.ers to my /. submission (where do dummy email addresses go) about someone AT somewhere.com post on my blog (right below this one).

Thank you for all your comments. Now, only if you all /.ers had given me your real email IDs, I could've replied to you individually :) Jokes apart, all the comments on /. and on my blog were really useful. I learnt a lot of new things about dummy email addresses. The best part though was that we got to hear from somewhere.com owner Nazgul. All I can say to you Nazgul is: Touche. And Sorry, man, for all the trouble caused unknowingly. From now on, I am using aj@example.com in online forums. Hope others will use example.com too.

Just to recap, here are some key and/or interesting learnings from the discussion (Mostly taken directly from reader comments):
* Dummy email addresses cause lot of problems to actual domain owners.
* As per RFC 2606, example.com (also example.net.net/example.org) is reserved for testing purposes. So, its best to use anything@example.com/net/org as a dummy email ID.
* Even if you think you use a dummy id because the domain doesn't exist right now, think again, it might be registered later.
* Use a one-time disposable address (such as from tanya.com/ or Mailinator) in those situations where you need to receive an initial reply, but none after that. Some other publicly available email IDs/services are:
- Jablome.com is a publicly accessible inbox for heywood@jablome.com.
- Get yourself a junk Hotmail account or something
- Use a domain less than 3 chars - can't exist, according to standards, so you won't be abusing anyone.
* Even though legality of following points made by nurb432 is dubious, they should make you think twice before using dummy email IDs:
- you are falsifying your identity with intent to deceive.
- you are assuming the identity of someone else, again with intent.
- improperly using others resources, or causing harm to others resources..

In the end, as Douglas Adams would say, So long, and thanks for all the dummy AT dummy dot com addresses. I am going the example.com way!

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Saturday, July 10, 2004

Someone@somewhere.com is, well, everywhere!

Maybe a year and a half back or so I, started using someone@somewhere.com as a dummy email id in online blogs, guestboks, forums, and sundry pages (including in replies to comments on my own blog where you are reading this). I think, in the choice of that arbit email id, I was sort of inspired by Shahrukh Khan starrer "Dil To Pagal Hai", a quintessential love-story with a tagline "Someone somewhere is made for you". So someone@somewhere.com sounded romantic, mysterious, and exotic all at the same time.

So far, so good. But then I started wondering what if someone actually tried to email me on that email address. Whenever I wondered on that, I always was sure that it would bounce because I assumed that there wouldn't be an actual email address like that. So, just for fun, I decided to google on someone@somewhere.com. And lo behold, there are some 4090 results! Now, that I did not expect. I mean, so many-like minded people, so many people, who in order to avoid spam, are resorting to the same id!

Taking it to next level, what if there is actually 'someone' who owns someone@somewhere.com ? You know what? It just might be true. Because the domain www.somewehere.com does exist, and hold your breath, its a anti-spam company! Now, how coincidental is THAT! All the people trying to avoid spam use someone@somewhere.com and in the process end up using an anti-spam company's domain! So, I am sure, even if 'someone' at somewhere.com wants the id someone@somewhere.com, he/she will not dare to do so because all of us someone/somewhere junkies have rendered it useless by exposing it to spammers!! I mean, imagine the amount of spam the actual someone@somewhere.com account would get!

So I would aver that a real someone@somewhere.com account does not exist. In fact, folks over at somewhere.com have these ids: nazgul AT somewhere.com and webmaster AT somewhere.com . Clever, eh! May the force be with them! (They surely would need it if they ever decide to open someone@somewhere.com email account :-)

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Star Times events

The Zebediah Plush concert is to be held on the 17th of July, 2004.
Athol Fugard's Playland will be held on the 18th of July, 2004.

Venue
The venue for the production will be the Chanakya Hall of the Grand Ashok.

Tickets
Tickets will be priced at Rs 50 for the concert and Rs.100 for Playland.
Tickets will be sold at the venue on show day. They can also be booked in advance by calling 98455 30562.

Cause
Proceeds of this production will be in support of an alternate learning centre for children of prisoners currently run by Visthar, a non profit organisation.

For any further details or inquiries please contact:Siddarth Selvaraj 98455 30562 .


More about Zebediah Plush at their site.

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All India Piano Competition

The Mehli Mehta Music Foundation announces an All-India Piano Competition to be held in Mumbai in October 2004 for students of piano in the age groups 8 to 13 years 14 to 19 years, and 20 to 25 years. The preliminary elimination rounds will be held in Mumbai around October 8. The Semi-finals will be held at the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation, Flat 2, Banoo Mansions, Cumballa Hill, Mumbai 400 026, and the Finals at the Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA). The dates are:

Age Group 8 to 13 years
Fri Oct 22 Semi-finals
Sun Oct 24 Finals
Age Group 14 to 19 years and 20 to 25 years
Sat Oct 23 Semi-finals
Mon Oct 25 Finals

Competition Rules
Duration of programme to be performed:
For age groups 8 to 13 years and 14 to 19 years: maximum fifteen minutes.
For age group 20 to 25 years: maximum twenty minutes.

The programme must begin with one compulsory work by Johann Sebastian Bach (e.g. Two part or Three part Invention, Prelude and Fugue from the Well-Tempered Klavier, etc) This must be followed by the competitor's choice of one or two works or movements from the Classical/ Romantic / post-Romantic / Impressionist/ Modern or Contemporary period of Piano literature.

Prizes will be awarded in each age group as follows:
8 to 13 years: 1st Prize Rs.10,000 , 2nd Prize Rs. 7,500, 3rd Prize Rs. 5,000
14 to 19 years:1st Prize Rs.15,000, 2nd Prize Rs.10,000, 3rd Prize Rs 7,500
20 to 25 years:1st Prize Rs.20,000, 2nd Prize Rs.15,000, 3rd Prize Rs.10,000

Four finalists in each age group will be judged by a panel of three judges from abroad. There will be an invited audience for the Finals.

Notes:
*Consideration will be given to students for choosing a well-balanced programme which does not exceed the prescribed time limit and is performed from memory. Competitors are advised to choose works that are comfortably within their technical capabilities. The jury will award points to competitors who not only possess technical competence and accuracy, but also display a feeling for phrasing, style, touch and dynamics.
*All competitors must submit their entry forms no later than August 1, 2004. Please clearly state the works to be performed, viz. the name of the composer, the composition and the correct title. Please carry the music scores to the preliminary, semi-final and final rounds for the jury.
*Should the competitors fail to measure up to the required standard, the prizes may not be awarded. The jury will decide if a composition is to be heard fully or in part and the competitor may be interrupted during his/her performance if necessary. The decision of the judges is final and irrevocable and no appeals will be entertained.
*Out-of-station candidates must make their own arrangements for accommodation throughout their stay in Mumbai.
A non-refundable registration fee of Rs.100 may please be sent to The Mehli Mehta Music Foundation by Cheque or Money Order along with the entry form. *Candidates must also send a valid document as proof of age.

For further inquiries please use the Foundation's email address: mmmf AT vsnl.net under the heading "Piano Competition."

The three members of the jury will perform, in recital, at a three-day Piano Festival to be held at the Experimental Theatre, NCPA, on October 26, 27 and 29.

June 2004
Mehli Mehta Music Foundation
All-India Piano Competition, Mumbai, October 2004
ENTRY FORM
(Please complete this form in block letters)
Name:
Age, and Proof of Age:
Postal Address:
Email Address/Fax:
Telephone:
Mobile Phone:
Name of Teacher and/or Institution:
Works to be played:
Title Composer
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Thursday, July 08, 2004

Tata Crucible — The business quiz

Tata Crucible will cover a wide canvas of subjects from the world of business: companies and corporate houses, brands and business history, people and products, business trivia and much more. 'Grand final' in Mumbai on July 31, 2004.

Details at http://www.tata.com/0_happenings/tata_crucible.htm

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Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Virgin Dell got mail!

Recently it struck me that both Richard Branson and Michael Dell started their business career by selling out stuff by mail orders! While Richard booted up his business journey by selling music tapes over mail oders, Dell started by peddling mail order computers from his university dormitory. How interesting is that!

Maybe I should start selling something by mail orders. Hey, no, wait. Today's equivalent would be email order. Man, sometime we take analogies too far.

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Sunday, July 04, 2004

Ta Ta.

Have you ever wondered what's the deal with this goodby expression called Tata (or Ta-Ta or Ta Ta)? I, for one, have. And, I always sorta thought that it referred to the Tata group. Well, I did some googling on it and found out the following information. Lot of it seems to suggest that it comes from babytalk. But there isn't any conclusive evidence. Judge for yourself:

* From this googlegroups link:
Interjection. Good-bye. Some use since c1895. Usually jocular, as it is associated with English use and is considered an affectation.

* Form this Hindu BusinessLine report
"What is the meaning of Tata?

The group's Web site tata.com educates thus: As a noun, it means `trustworthiness, reliability, ethical business practices', and as verb, `to fulfil a promise, to carve a better future', but there is also an alternative meaning, `an uncommon surname in India'. For the origin of the word, I looked at www.jamshedpurlive.com which states that one of the ancestors of the Tata Family, Behram, took the name of `Tata', probably a nickname meaning `hot-tempered'. It seems his descendants admit that Tatas are somewhat peppery.

Does anyone know who said `ta-ta' to whom?

One school of thought says, the firm said `ta-ta' to the partner who was thumbing his nose at Tata.

According to another school, the affected partner said `bye-bye' to Tata, and nobody told him `ta-ta' at the farewell since that would have been an affront - as much as it would be for Ashram children to sing the nursery rhyme `Ba-ba black sheep'. "

* Another Hindu Report

O.K.'s colloquial partner Ta Ta, British baby talk for good-bye now also adult baby talk, no doubt entered Indianspeak through farewells said to and by baba-log, the children of sahibs. Like papa, mama, dada and nana, it is one of those apparently meaningless words that an infant utters, unless you speak Romanian in which tata means father. Cheerio, another English colloquialism expressing good wishes on parting that I saw and heard being used in
India is derived from "chair-oh", as supposedly uttered by departing guests when hailing sedan chairs in Britain.

* Googlegroups again comes to rescue
In our last episode <83ijln$9jl$2@nw051.infoweb.ne.jp>, the lovely and talented "akoamay" broadcast on alt.usage.english: |There was this phrase, "Is It Ta-ta to Tatami?" (Newsweek International |Edition 12/13/1999), as the title of its article about the news that |demand for tatami mats in Japan's city dwellers is fast declining. | |The word "ta-ta" reminded me of the famous Tata business group in India |but nothing more. So I consulted a very large English-Japanese dictionary |to find that this word means "good-bye" and is used mostly by infants.
This is not quite correct. The origin may be given as "babytalk," but it is almost certainly used by more adults than by infants.
I hope someone will take time to tutor me: | |1. Is this word used by infants both in the US and in UK?
I'm not certain that it is often used by infants at all, unless they are taught it. It is used by adults in both the US and the UK, but is more common in the UK.
|2. In another dictionary at hand, it says the word "ta" is used by infants | in the UK and Australia and means "thank you." Then, how come "ta-ta" | means "goodbye" instead of something like "Thank you, thank you," I | wonder.
Again, the origin may have been something an infant originated, but this word, so far as it is used, is used by adults. "Ta-ta" may have come from an attempt to teach "goodbye" as "bye-bye."
|3. Perhaps do they say "ta" for "thank you" because they as infants still | find it hard to pronounce the "th" sound properly? Perhaps the first time. Insofar as infants use it, they use it because it taught to them by adults. Almost all adults address infants in a language that is not quite English. Babytalk is how people talk *to* babies (and so is the first part of language that babies learn), only then does babytalk become the talk *of* babies.
If you observe native speakers talking to infants and small children, you may not recognize babytalk, but you should be able to detect the special intonation it uses.

* Also checkout one more googlegroup discussion on this issue.

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Business Quiz for Corporates

The Canara School of Business Management, Central College, Bangalore University, Bangalore will host a Business Quiz for Corporate teams in partnership with the KQA as part of their annual festival Esperanto 2004.

The details:
Teams of two members. Unlimited entries per corporate entity. Registration fee Rs.l 000 per team. Written Prelims followed by Finals for 8 teams

Schedule
SATURDAY lOth JULY 2004. Prelims: 1030hrs. Finals: 1200hrs

Venue
JNANA JYOTHI AUDITORlUM. Central College Campus (Near Kaveri Bhavan/ Off KG Road). BANGALORE-560 001

The Prizes
Ist prize Rs.l0,000. 2nd Prize Rs.5,000. 3rd Prize Rs.3,000

QM: Arul Mani, KQA

For further details, call Yoganand - 98862 16912, Sandeep - 98860 64336

Please note that Cheques/ DDs are to be drawn in favour of "ESPERANTO 2004" payable at Bangalore.
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Saturday, July 03, 2004

The Black Coffee Festival of Theatre
5 - 10 July 2004. Alliance Francaise de Bangalore. 7.30pm.

The Bodycatcher. 5th & 6th July.

The Bodycatcher is based on an idea by Alistar Boucher and Amy Thornton, two British volunteers who worked with Black Coffee from March to May this year. The play is almost fable like in tone with large colourful characters, music and a story that borders on the melodramatic. The cast includes Raza Hussain, Ajith Hande, Pooja Hegde, Govinda Asrani, Priya Venkataraman, Shilpa Munikempanna

Khel. 7th & 8th July.

Based on a true incident reported in a publication early this year, Khel revolves around a cricket match played between two teams of boys, each from different communities. The play explores the tension that exists between these communities through the interplay of stark realism that shifts from the present to the past. This is Black Coffee’s first play in Hindi. The cast includes Sanjeev Iyer, Raza Hussain, Mahesh Pandey, Sheila Govindaraj and PD Sathish Chandra.

Dancing on Glass. 9th & 10th July.

Scripted by Ram Ganesh Kamatham, with inputs from the cast, Dancing on Glass has a contemporary setting, focusing on two individuals, one a software engineer, the other a call centre employee. The play uncompromisingly strips bare the human psyche against the backdrop of two of the most popular industries of urban India, through a technology driven production. The cast features Malavika Varadan and Kartik Iyer.

All three plays have been directed by Preetam Koilpillai.

Daily Tickets Rs 100. Season tickets Rs 249.
Available at The Supermarket, Brigade Road and Café de Paris, Alliance Francaise.

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Thursday, July 01, 2004

Some trivia

A few interesting quiz questions from an egroup I am a member of:
1. What is Bacardi Law (Answer in Context to US).
2. Which company advertises itself with the slogan –Sweetest place on Earth ?
3. What is so special about the clock on Wimbledon’s Centre Court ?
4. Which brand was advertised in India’s first TV Commercial ad ?



Answers
1. Laws restricting trade with Cuba
2. Hershey’s.
3. The only digital Timepiece made by Rolex.
4. Gwalior Suitings.


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