Unbelievable, but its true and applicable to many of us internet freaks! I dunno about you but I am the one who belong to the unfortunate group of these Pappus . I still don’t know how to type! Its really very (more…)

Even copyright laws have gone archaic in this digital age. But strangely enough, legal expertise is not easy to find on this issue. A couple of years back, I was in Dehradun (a state capital in India) and looked for an legal expert on IPR & copyright issues  at the local bar council. Strangely I wasn’t able to locate any and was advised by some counsellors to go to delhi for the same attributing it to be a complex issue. I discussed the questions at open forums online and got all sorts of confusing answers. After giving their advice, everyone will add that you should confirm it with some attorney with expertize in this domain. PubLaw has a good coverage on it with this fine print, I have also tried to understand Creative Commons License many times. But some how nothing gets into my mind.

Around a couple of months back I met Rahi who used to take help for expanding his ideas on his blog from newspapers’ & magazines’ articles. He was advised by someone to restrain from it and he agreed to it. But I find nothing wrong when he still continues the same way. Another friend Archet writes more than a dozen blogs based on all stolen content. But as Dilbert puts it, intangibles can’t be stolen!

One of my friends Ashok got scared of these practices of freely using anyone’s personal flickr photographs and now he restrain himself from using these sites for creating personal albums. The assumption that whatever available on the Internet is in public domain and hence free for use by everyone is hurting sentiments of many and changing their online behaviour. Today I know many people who dare not to share their personal or family photographs through online webspaces. They fear their possible illicit usage.

Last month I met Priyanka of TwilightFairy who has fought with the country’s biggest media conglomerate for stealing a (more…)

Who really is Poor?

No, not the beggars, for their gross earnings are above the national per capita income. (One report reveals the total earnings of all the beggars in Mumbai alone to an astonishing Rupees 180 crore i.e. 1,800 millions! Take a guess for Chennai figures by visiting here, for Hyderabad here, for Kolkata click here, for Delhi click here or this one.).

No, it can’t be the slum-dwellers of metropolis …as the valuation of most slum units are more than a well-built average rural home!

Nor it can be the person lying on a footpath …for these people have access to exotic & invaluable but legally banned drugs for their indulgence, which even a middle-class household can not afford, if it ever wished for the same!

And about daily wage-earners …I have observed most of them including masons, plumbers, rickshaw-pullers, auto-drivers, restaurant waiters, etc. making many folds higher income than a qualified junior level executive. Moreover, their status is that of a businessman as against the one slogging for his pay through out the month!

So who is actually POOR in the real sense??? Well, hold your breathe, for I might sound a bit insulting when (more…)

On the feedback to “Love this Pet …A Tiger!“, Aldo  Tripiciano, the owner & webmaster of buytigers.com has come up with certain clarifications on his website in defense of his act. Now he says that he was just fooling around with this fake story of selling tigers online! And in response to it, he had received several hundred emails (over 300 orders for tigers till date), but he hasn’t replied to any one of them. And he further adds that he is not a trickster to lure people to part with their hard earned money. But he accepts that he was aware that the site may have hurt someone’s sensibilities. And yes, it has (more…)

Studies indicate that (more…)

But a mere thought of possibilities of existence of life at some other planet gives butterflies

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But many times this question crops up into my mind :

Do we really need a National Language?

Hindi is of course our country’s widespread language today and deserve to be called a National Language. It descended from Sanskrit and is easy to learn. But at times it seems to me that its not very techno-friendly and words are quite difficult to pronounce and grasp. In contrast, our South Indian languages like Tamil are very musical and easy to speak (I mean we need to exert less force and thrust lesser air out of our throats while speaking these languages).

Secondly, if there should be a national language, why there should not be a language which could be accorded an International Language status? In fact, history had done the humankind a favour by the spread of British colonial culture resulting in the widespread use of English in most parts of the world. Today its considered as the language of business.

Today, we are supposed to learn at least three languages : first our mother tongue (some regional language or dialect), then our national language Hindi and then English to readily steer through our life. Isn’t much of the human resources being wasted in this? How many human hours are consumed in learning three languages when, if given a choice for one, many would do away with one.

I recall my interaction with one friend, a couple of years back whom I met at some wedding ceremony in Mumbai. Unfortunately, (more…)

Everything and anything can happen in this strange strange world. Some years back, our then presiden Mr. Abdul Kalam was worried about the fact that one of the country’s foremost Wild Life sanctuary meant for tigers viz. Sariska Wild Life Sanctuary in Rajasthan, suddenly declared that its tiger population has gone to zero. Censure followed and confirmed the fears. Recently, one tiger and a tigress were transported there to breed back the tigers there, after all the media hype & criticism.

Forget all these media hype. If you are tired of those old pettable options of dogs & cats, you can opt for a bigger (and yeah, a really BIGGER) cat (more…)

Why will Internet crash ?

* OECD predicts an acute shortage of IP addresses by 2011

* Explosive growth in new Internet connections is leading to consumption of more & more IP addresses.

* 85 percentage of the possible IP addresses had been already allocated by early this year.

* Remainig 16 percentage of IP addresses are expected to be finished in (more…)

Contrary to the popular perception, humour too has to pay its price. And perhaps our society is too poor to afford it! At times, humour require us to be careless, carefree or even ignorant. And taking things lightly might ease out some ongoing tensions but we might behave irresponsibly, thus paying the price in form of the resultant losses.

Of late, we have started taking things too seriously however trivial or unimportant they might be. We have gone over-cautious, over-conscious, over-committed & too rigid in our philosophy, values & approach. There are protocols for smiling (or rather putting up plastic smiles), etiquettes attached with laughters, whispering at the lowest possible decibel limit for lol! and so on. All these leave no space for humour but paradoxically are equally humourous.

To find out more, I went on to observe the normal default emotions of Delhiites in their (more…)