Online dating... Interesting concept. I have recently put up my profile on one of these and received a response!! Now what I find most interesting about this phenomenon is the profile of people online.. Young professionals - the women at least (which is a current area of interest having been single for a while) and try a search and you will find that all have been online over the last few days - over Christmas and new year perhaps...

Now I always thought that the whole dating / relationship game was stacked against the men. But as per one of the afternoon dailies in London, there are 50000 women (after discounting the not looking, gay, asexual, past their prime etc) who don't have a hope in hell of getting a guy (unless 50000 men two time)!
Which begs the question - why are there several single men floating around (not including the Pervs, gay, past their prime and the obnoxious)? Inbetween relationships? Work money issues? Lack of time? Fear of failure?? All of the above!?!?!? It would be interesting to conduct a poll - why are there single people in London??

Note: In India this exclusive club is known as Club 69 (931 women for every 1000 men)! Here the elusive ladies can be called London 50K? Or For men Looking for London 50K

IISC Attack - Find them and hang them

Now there has been an attack on one of the few peaceful places left in India and the casualties are retired professors and lab assistants. The message? Everyone is fair game..... Firstly what the hell was the government doing? This is a time and age, inspite of the tragedies which have befallen the sub-continent, where no amount of precaution is enough. As per an intelligence police officer, the commercial targets are clear as imported terrorism becomes more destructive and starts targeting India's commercial interests. Now that is the defensive strategy, provide security cover to all important gatherings; officials, scientists, vip's ......But for how long? The drain on the resources, loss of liberty and freedom, arethey really worth it? Probably not. An increasingly popular view is that this fight must be taken into the enemy camp. This is also a good reason that Dubya is so popular in India, probably more than any other president in the US/Indian history; shoot first ask questions later.
Softpedaling the issue wont help, only the political will is missing and why not? There was one of the esteemed elected representative seen in the Company of India's most wanted ... Dawood Ibrahim - Butcher of Bombay, the terrorist who planned the blasts which killed over 200 people. His excuse? He was invited by the other family... he should be drawn and quartered for treason against the state and the people! and what of the people across the border? The woefully inadequate response the earthquake, the delayed aid which is still to reach the freezing kashmiris, and on the Indian side, while the losses were significant, I am sure the houses have been rebuilt!! What kind of country will rather let people die than disclose the training activities in the region... time will tell as will the commerce (or the lack thereof across the border!)!

Phone tapping is history...

These days you think you can do what you like with a little laptop or a safely private computer? Think again. At the very moment you are reading this, someone is recording your browsing habits, for commercial or a host of national security reasons (not all of them bad). A student at UMass Dartmouth was investigated for ordering a book from a library because it had been flagged. But these are defensive things. The Chinese have used a set of hackers to tap into foreign sensitive information.
With VoIP the big thing on the horizon, phonetapping is history - all the tapper needs is a good hacker to get to all your information.
Is there a defense? Or is it really something we need to be concerned about? Not really, the usual bunch of phishers and other cyber fraudsters are taken care of by installing the usual tools, SpyBot is highly recommended as is Panadasoftware's online activesacn. Zonealarm firewall is reasonably good as well.
As far as the government is concerned, wouldnt worry unless you are a rabid anti-establishment type or some one hell bent on causing mischief. Surveillance is here to stay and the sooner we get used to it the better. What might be a good idea is to put in some safeguards to make sure some enterprising criminal or jihadi doesn't get hold of out information!

Quest for the best (and authentic)curry in town continues after a great experience with lahore kebab house, the next step was to try this new place called the Blue Junction at Morden. Close to Morden station so not very inaccessible and the ambience and the decor was nice.
Ordered a bunch of starters, good but not exceptional, their tapioca starter was great though recommended only after several pints in a neighbourhood pub; it was that fiery. The main course of the evening was a fiery lamb vindaloo. Great food, and as expected weapon grade curry. Howeever, the evening went on and it came time to pay the bill.... £141!That's for starters, few main courses, some whiskey and a couple of bottles of wine for five people!!! Bloody daylight robbery! So bottom line, resonnable food, terrible for the wallet. Largely avoidable.

Wikipedia has recently tightened controls on who can edit the content. Personally this is a great resource and I would hate any restrictions placed...however since this is a general information resource based on fact not fiction, this is a good idea. If I were adding some content, I would want my name or at least an internet Id associated with this! Wonder what other issues are there regarding this?? This website has a section on an individual management institute in India...most of what has been put out there is rubbish, perhaps the solution to the problem is a larger number of volunteers to filter out junk content.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5967_1565121,001600060001.htm
Picked up this wierd story on a national daily. Apparently an Indian immigrant worker in Saudi Arabia stands to loose an eye. And this is not due to some medical condition, this is some law which prevails in the country.
This chap had a small tiff with some local fellow who lost an eye in the tiff. So now he is in Jail and must loose in a quid-pro-quo (sic) justice (sic) system. Now supposedly, a team of some 8 doctors will decide the cause of eyesight loss for the victim and then the victim will hold the absolute power of pardon irrespective of the provocation, the circumstances or for that matter the due process.

Instacoll

This is a fresh attempt at a blog and I thought I would start with something to help out lazy people (like me) who do not like to move about for work! I am a hopeful entreprenure who collaborates with people from all over - India, US, UK etc. and far too many mails were flying around. Fortunately I came across this little programme (or program is you are in the US) called instacoll. It allows several people to edit a document at the same time. Unfortunately it supports only microsoft programmes i.e IE, MS Office etc. which I presume is due to the CEO Sabeer Bhatia's (the guy who co founded hotmail) earlier Microsoft linkages - they made him richer by $400,000,000!! He seems to have recovered from his earlier disasterous star-ups like arzoo.com. It remains to be seen if this (free) idea will take off.

The programme smartly interacts with skype contacts and with a resonable bandwidth (I have tested it on a 0.5 meg connection and on a 6 meg con.) it allows users to talk on skype and co-edit docs / spreadsheets/ presentations. Controls are well designed allowing the initiater to limit the damage the other party can do! sign-up is simple, works off existing mail ID's - on the whole a well designed piece of software.

However I have the local weather to thank for all the browsing time - snowfall in the Midlands (that is in England). Trains delayed, roads closed and believe me driving in the snow is not a plesant experience especially if one is from the tropics. Why the whole country grinds to a halt in inclement weather that too with adequte warning is another issue altogether.