Had this in mind for sometime now, but could not get the exhaustive list. nonetheless, let me start with what I know and request your assistance in completing it.

This data is of IT and related companies, hires of 2009 batch from NITK only.

I request you provide the missing information (or updates) to fill up the table. Also forward this to as many friends and ask them to fill in what they know. It is the only way this can be completed.

The purpose of this document is to congregate from the distributed network and provide information in one place for the benefit of whomsoever interested. I promise it will come to use for many people, and also act as a feedback mechanism to assist our juniors.

You can reach to me or provide the details in the comments section below.

“If Email were to be invented today, what could it look like?”, this was the vision that started Google Wave. I hope you have all watched the Google Wave demo (if not, you certainly should). remarkable vision, true innovation, deservingly acclaimed by many.

Now, isn’t this a question we must ask ourselves more often? Get a new perspectives that we fail to, many a time..

I was wondering just how would religion be if it were invented today. Now, religion is a large part of our lives, I say this because a majority of the world’s population follow some known religion. There is speak of diversity being essential, and many religions also contain in their preachings that it is the only true true religion.

I do not have answer to this. I must think about it myself, too. You too think about it, and maybe pen it down.

so here’s what I though of, my 3 commandments -

1. do and let do
   
2. everyone is equal
   
3. have patience o wise one
   

wow! the requirements have consequences that are far reaching. this can perhaps be a very good test of the ultimate knowledge and learnings of a person.
while doing your list, remember – your system has to work even if _everyone_ follows it. Religion is devised for the masses, estimate their capacities. (precisely for this reason, religion has to change with the changing masses)

I do urge you this time, to take a minute off and answer the question seriously. looking forward to knowing your thoughts.

I has recently spoken of my experiences with kubuntu 9.04

Today I removed it from my system, due to several reasons, most on the functionality side.

1. KDE4 would not remember the settings. My desktop widgets would get reset on every boot. (this alone is a deal breaker)
2. Sound wouldn’t work fine. multiple sources of sound/flash problem (I needed it! youtube and media player)
3. Microphone wouldn’t work out-of-the-box (need Skype)
   
4. Hard disk drives would not auto mount. had to be mounted by typing the password each time.
5. The themes weren’t really appealing. The plasma desktop, however was.
6. General appeal. To quote Srik, “I always have this weird feeling that everything in Ubuntu is oversized.” I share the feeling.

Anyway, I truly couldn’t make myself try anything that did not have wubi to set it up. (separate partitions just aren’t necessary) Ubuntu, Kubuntu – tried both this month. The next release is in August, I think.
So here was my saviour… (drumroll…) LinuxMint

1. Cool looks (yeah, its important to me)
2. Things work out of the box (yea, Sabayon style on debian platform )
3. They have a good story behind it. I liked the story (the {clem} paragraph in the About page)
4. Everything I expect to work works (yea- graphics, flash, wireless, apt-get, drivers, codecs – you name it!)
5. Zero post-install customization necessary (installing apps, drivers, fixing things.. )

I have further more respect for Ubuntu now, seeing that things like Linux Mint can be built on it.
Linux Mint 7 will surely stand high in the rankings of my experiences with linux distributions, and will be my current recommended distro for new users.

QOTD (quote of the day)

It is hardly as if women leaders do not wield real power in India. 255 Lok Sabha seats have been won in the 2009 elections by parties where women are the absolute and unchallenged leaders. In spite of this, we have seen no change in the number of women Parliamentarians. The idea of reserving seats for a group is based on the pectation that when they come to power, they will use it to help other less fortunate members of the group. Clearly that expectation has been definitively belied.

- Santosh Desai writes in “Gender Reservations” under City City Bang Bang, Times of India, Bangalore, Page 8, June 15th 2009.

SOTD (software of the day )

VideoCacheView for windows
After watching a video in a Web site, you may want to save the video file into your local disk for playing it offline in the future. If the video file is stored in your browser’s cache, this utility can help you to extract the video file from the cache and save it for watching it in the future.
It automatically scans the entire cache of Internet Explorer and Mozilla-based Web browsers (Including Firefox) and finds all video files that are currently stored in it. It allows you to easily copy the cached video files into another folder for playing/watching them in the future.

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Today, I installed Kubuntu 9.04

• The Good

1. installs from within windows on ntfs (i’ve stopped attempting to install suse and sabayon for this reason)
2. detects wireless (no wireless problems in linux since two years now)
3. isn’t crashing (not that i have used it much or pushed it, for that matter)
4. looks beautiful (this is one important factor that is keeping me tied to this)
5. KDE4 widgets are kick-ass. cool!!
6. its closing on with Ubuntu wrt functionality (i fundamentally like KDE, was a GNOME user due to Ubuntu’s remarkable features)
7. installing software is easy. (installed opera as binary, codecs and related stuff with kubuntu-restricted-extras apt meta-package, including flash and java)
8. Bundles software for most requirements are very good. Definitely a plus over gnome apps, I personally feel.

• The Bad

1. Graphics issue. Drivers. Compiz doesn’t work. major blow. (I don’t care if it isn’t their issue. I am not blaming anyone. Just that, it doesn’t work for me)
2. Restricted Hardware Driver isn’t mentioning that graphics card has propreitory driver. (I read that there isn’t one yet, for Jaunty+ATI)
3. Sound from two sources – still buggy (youtbe in opera didn’t give sound with amarok paused)
4. window manager themes could be better. (The destop looks beautiful, the windows not anywhere so)
5. mouseless operation not comfortable (maybe its just me, being new to this desktop environment. buttons are tiny, mouse usage reqd is heavy)
6. Keyboard media keys didn’t work out-of-the-box. configured them for amarok alone, but yet they don’t act as global shortcuts now.

Its otherwise a very good software. Remarkable in the fact that it is all this, and yet free. who are these ppl who write this software?? where are they? @ http://twitter.com/arbitya/status/2080048754

screenshot – http://dailyscreenshot.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/kde-4-and-desktop-widgets/

EDIT: Yes, there is something called Reinsurance.

Reinsurance is a means by which an insurance company can protect itself with other insurance companies against the risk of losses.

What about them going down. there’s something for that too.

Reinsurance companies themselves also purchase reinsurance and this is known as a Retrocession. LOL

so then, there is a way they can all go down at once? Nah.. they are covered. They usually have a clause in the agreements to limit there risk of catastrophically large losses.

Typically, insurers prefer to limit their exposure to a loss from a single event to some small portion of their capital base, on the order of 5 percent.

And since I am not writing an assignment, I can officially quote from Wikipedia Insurance and Reinsurance

——————————————————————————————————————————

do private Insurance firms have Bankruptcy Insurance ?

Isn’t it very important?

guarantee from the Govt. is one thing I can imagine. public companies have it easy. what about private companies?

do they pay a premium too, then, to the Govt. for bankruptcy insurance?

and is there a cap on the insurance to the sum insured ? [like I think ther's a Rs 1 lac cap on insurance of SB accounts for centralized banks?]

(Cheers to KP, for initiating the discussion)

on a different note, can the govt arbitrarily move funds (derived from taxes) wherever they care to? hmm…

Here, I am talking NOT about 112/108/911 kind-of emergency, but instead about the first point of personal contact like family or friends.

Is there a standard protocol to save emergency contact numbers in mobile phones?

How about SpeedDial 2 being used for the emergency number? (Like SpeedDial 1 is reserved for voicemail. )

Enforcing end users to set it manually, is of-course not a good solution, and would only work with people who are aware and enthusiastic. 

However, there is scope for this to be done in the network end, if the required no is taken during subscriber registration.

The user, signing up for the connection, provides the next-to-kin/family/friend emergency contact number and that is stored in the network —> using SpeedDial 2 (press and hold button 2) —> phone sends request to the network to connect to the emergency family member number provided by the subscriber —> and the call is thus routed beyond.

There is also scope for mulitple numbers to be defined and fallback in case of non-availability of the primary emergency phone no, right?

What do u think? (there’s always the comments section for feedback

PS: another use-case : If u find someone’s lost phone, what number in there do u try to contact? the first number in the phonebook? how relevant would that be to the situation? you’ll look for “Home” ? (that’s smart, isn’t it ) isn’t there a need to find his/her “primary” alternate contact number..

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Thought if i don’t put up a list, i’ll never know at the end of the vacations, if I did well

• Read

1. in spite of the gods – i’ve started
2. the lord of the rings
3. the mahabharata

• Watch

1. all good movies from “my movie collection”
2. all enjoyable tv series’ from “my tv series collection”
3. some tv

• Do

1. play badminton
2. sit around at home (aaah.. does this qualify as a todo list item.. life!)
3. music classes maybe?
4. fix some stuff around home

I know.. the Watch part is a bit humungous, bit I’d really like to complete the rest in full

I am asked by many people of the working model of open-source software.

How can ppl give away their effort for free?

Why do ppl give away their effort for free?

While I myself am learning and ask the readers to put down their thoughts in the comments, the open source world is huge and complex and there are many facets to it.

At the bottom of it all, some acts don’t have reason. and other acts are initiated by these acts.  There could be a wish to get the needful done, and I could spend my time and effort to reach the goal.  Its like gardening. Leave that aside, for now.

Open source software did not not come into the top-100 searched term (is it?) for that alone. I wish to present a case (probably well used, given the generality of this) to show why a process which is bigger than just a few people should exist, and why it’ll help the people who are themselves the target segment of the processes.

Say there’s a person who is looking out for a job in the market and is having difficulty finding one, due to the present circumstances.

Polishing his skills is the best thing he could do in this time, along with spending time to look for opportunities.

It is just more convenient to show results, say in the form of involvement and contribution to a known open source software, wherein the processes dictate that you should be capable else it filters you out of the system, better than leaving it to chance in the interview?

There is sometimes a the-hen-and-egg reference quoted to say that opportunity alone provides further (future) opportunity and it is impossible to get into the loop without.

Take up an open source project. Work on it. You will be working with people in tougher circumstances than in normal IT companies. It demands high level of skills, technical and personal, which act as testimony to your capabilities in times of need, or right away.

Think. Create. Engineer