Office productivity moving online, market suddenly hot

Microsoft Corp. announced Monday its Microsoft Office Live Workspace, a web based extension of Microsoft Office that that allows users to access their documents online and share their work with others including those who do not run Microsoft Office on the desktop.

The beta version of this service, which went online today, allows users to collaborate and comment on documents online, but requires Microsoft Office to run on the desktop if the document has to be edited.

Microsoft has only put a part of its Office suite online, to protect its business of selling software licenses to Office on the desktop. The company is pitching for a combination “software and service” model for the delivery of software in contrast to competitor Google Inc., which offers online office productivity software like a spreadsheet, word processor, and presentation software.

Adobe Systems Inc. is also moving towards an online model. It also announced Monday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a company in Waltham, Massachusetts called Virtual Ubiquity and its online word processor,Buzzword, which was built with Adobe Flex software and runs in the Adobe Flash Player.

Microsoft’s move to help its customers access their files on the web from wherever they are, may hence be seen as a nice new feature, but not a dramatic change in business model. A lot of customers in fact favor this dual model, and there have been hints that Google too may offer a desktop version of its office productivity software.

All of a sudden, office productivity, is seeing fierce competition. It seemed like that market had been won and conceded to Microsoft with folks like OpenOffice and StarOffice putting up token resistance.

IBM Corp. launched last month Lotus Symphony, an office productivity suite based on open-source OpenOffice.org and Eclipse. The company had 100,000 downloads of the software in the first week it was offered. Analysts like Gartner Inc. say that IBM’s Symphony is just a makeover of OpenOffice which was already available for free download or through Sun Microsystems Inc. as StarOffice. Because of remaining compatibility issues, user organizations have to still run Microsoft Office once they start using OpenOffice, according to Gartner.

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IBM has 100,000 downloads of Lotus Symphony, but too early to call

Bollywood and the “stupid Indian”

A picture is worth a thousands words, goes the old saw. By that reasoning, the corrosive images coming out from Bollywood, India’s prolific cinema production industry, and its TV soaps must have by now done great damage to the image abroad of Indians.

In a movie from Bollywood, the hero’s falling in love is usually incomplete without a song and a dance. The couple never ever jump into bed, because the official censors in India don’t allow screening that.

But there is enough in the dance sequences to titillate a repressed audience. A favorite of directors is a scene of a fully dressed woman standing under a waterfall or a shower, revealing a lot through the wetness of her clothes. The director also throws in well-choreographed dance sequences, with a large number of over-fed and skimpily clad starlets, known locally as “item girls”, dancing in tandem with the hero and heroine.

The story line is also quite simple and repetitive, exploiting ad nauseam the “ love conquers everything” theme. The hero or the heroine usually come from a poor family, and there is opposition to the marriage, and other obstacles thrown up by villains who suddenly surface in the plot, either in search of profit, or hired by a competing girl friend or boy friend. Pain is exaggerated and so is cruelty and sadness. A gunned down actor could take half an hour to die, while a nail-biting audience watches every gory detail.

It is only recently that producers have started experimenting with new themes, but most are quite improbable in the Indian context. One movie "Nishabd" (Silent) released this year had a top actor Amitabh Bachchan, who is in his 60s in real life and in the movie, falling in love with an 18 year-old girl. The film was not a hit at the box offices.

Realism is also given the go by in popular TV soaps. The heroes and heroines grow older, and have children and grand-children, as the soaps proceeds from one episode to another. But they still strut around with jet-black hair and youthful faces and figures. And they are still caught up in romantic entanglements of their glorious past. In one serial, the widowed matriarch is a great-great grandmother !

Most of the popular soaps center around wealthy business households with spacious homes, and expensive cars. Some aim at being westernized or modernized, by introducing, and subtly glorifying, to traditional Indians and the country’s rural masses, themes of infidelity, extra-marital affairs, and crimes of passion.

Other soaps like "Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi" (Because a Mother-in-law was once a Daughter-in-law too) attempt, in a contrived way, to convey that despite their wealth, the family is still traditional, adhering to the local “sanskar” or culture.

As for the poor, they don’t exist in the world-view of the soaps. The Indian soap is a celebration of the new upper-class hedonism that has emerged as a result of India’s economic boom.

All this adds up to a potential image problem for Indians. If earlier the country was known as a land of elephants and snake charmers, it will now get portrayed as land of social upstarts living in a world of their own imagination.

If Bollywood portrayed Indian men and women dancing around trees or breaking into song, with little by way of intellect or existential concerns, the soaps have gone a step further. They have brought into focus the new Indian upstart. Unlike the love-smitten, song and dance loving hero and heroine of Bollywood, the heroes and heroines of the soaps do unfortunately exist.

But they do not represent all Indians. They do not represent the large number of Indian engineers and researchers who have made a mark, occupying top positions both in India and abroad. They do not represent India’s scholars and Nobel prize winners.

They do no represent India’s large number of poor.

As Indian producers try to take their fare abroad, they will not be exporting real Indian culture, but a new ersatz culture and a new stereotype – the stereotype of the stupid Indian.

Iraq – a war that need not have happened ?

It is now up to the American people to prove to the world that democracy works in the country, that a President and his coterie cannot hold the country’s will and intelligence for granted.

But first the background:

Deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had offered to go into exile, ahead of the US invasion of Iraq, according to a transcript of talks from a meeting between US President George Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in February, 2003 at Bush’s Texas ranch.

Saddam Hussein was prepared to take US$1 billion and go into exile before the Iraq war, said this report in the Washington Post.

"The Egyptians are speaking to Saddam Hussein. It seems he's indicated he would be prepared to go into exile if he's allowed to take $1 billion and all the information he wants about weapons of mass destruction," Bush was quoted as saying at the meeting one month before the US-led invasion, according to the Washington Post.

The transcript was published this week by the Spanish newspaper El Pais. White House spokesperson Dana Perino said at a press briefing, when asked about the report in El Pais, “Well, without commenting on the details or talking about a private conversation between two world leaders and whether or not that happened, if you think back to that time, there were a lot of rumors”.

Saddam Hussein’s attempt to flee the country, ahead of an invasion by the US and its allies, puts on display once again the basic cowardice of despots when they find that the chips are down.

But that Bush did not pursue this offer further is evidence that he wanted to invade Iraq at whatever costs. If Saddam Hussein had to go into exile, he would be hard put to justify the war and the loss of lives.

So intent was Bush on war that, according to the transcript, he told the Spanish Prime Minister that whatever happens, the allies would be in Baghdad by the end of March.

Let’s work out the alternate scenario had Bush and his allies pursued the proposal for Saddam Hussein’s exile. The butcher of Baghdad would have gone into exile, probably naming a successor, or a transitional government in Iraq. Most logically in this situation, the transition would be supervised by the UN, and would not require a US invasion force.

Yes, it would take time, and patience, but the Iraq war and a lot of loss of life would have been avoided. US troops would have been home, and Americans wouldn’t have to bear the pain of the continuous loss of American lives in Iraq.

A lot of Americans and many more Iraqi lives would have been saved if Bush had not decided to play cowboy.

If the transcript is found to be accurate, and it is found that Bush did not pursue the exile option, preferring instead to rush into Iraq with guns blazing, there may be a case for impeaching the US President.

It is now up to the American people to prove to the world that democracy works in the country.

Related article:

Why the US should stay in Iraq

Kosovo dispute highlights the issue of nationalities

Serbia warned the UN on Thursday of "unforeseeable consequences" that could destabilize the world if the breakaway province of Kosovo declares independence unilaterally later this year, according to a report by Reuters.

Serbian President Boris Tadic was evidently self-serving when he warned the UN General Assembly of the consequences of the legal precedent of an unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo. But he would have probably struck a sympathetic chord with a number of other countries, including many in Europe, that are fighting their own separatist movements.

Spain has to worry about Basque separatists, Russia about separatists in Chechnya and other rumblings of separation within the Russian federation, and Turkey about an undercurrent for a greater Kurdistan, spanning Kurd dominated areas in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Outside Europe, there are the Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka, Kashmiri separatists in India, and a large number of other smaller and maybe lesser known separatist movements which will may get some encouragement from an unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo.

Nations have been built not only on shared ideological principles, shared culture and history, common language, or by a voluntary association of different groups. Some of them have also been built on the basis of shared ethnicity and/or religion. Pakistan, for example, was partitioned from India on religious grounds alone.

If we go by history, and a sense of justice, there should be no objection to an ethnic group declaring independence. This stand unfortunately only looks good in a treatise on nationalities, meant for academic discourse alone.

If we put it into practice, we could see a large part of the world “balkanized” because every ethnic group or group with nationalistic aspirations could demand independence regardless of its political and economic viability as an independent country. Many of them will likely emerge in haste and violence, without the institutions in place required to be nations.

The problem gets more complicated when we consider that every group with nationalistic aspirations is not the sole occupant of the land that it claims for its new nation. In Kosovo, for example, about 120,000 Serbs still live there, roughly half of them in isolated enclaves protected by a NATO peacekeeping force of 16,000, and the rest in a northern triangle that is closely tied to the Serbian hinterland, according to the Reuters report. Kashmir for example has a large number of Hindus who do not go along with the idea of the independence of the land.

Without the consent of these minority groups, many a newly independent nation will hence be born in bitterness, civil war, ethnic cleansing, and instability, apart from the hostility of the country they have broken from.

If Kosovo declares unilateral independence from Serbia, as it threatens, it could be the first of a large number of new flashpoints around the world.

There is also the danger that once a precedent is established, ethnic groups may consciously choose to populate an area, establish themselves as the majority population there, and then declare unilateral independence. That could mean, say 50 years from now, a slew of new nations that currently don’t exist.

The upshot is that a negotiated settlement between Serbia and Kosovo would in the best long-term interest of the world. Better perhaps that Kosovo gets autonomy with almost all powers over the territory transferred to it.

A solution in Kosovo, that avoids an unilateral declaration of independence, will not change the demands of the Tamils in Sri Lanka or the Basques in Spain. But the UN will avoid opening a Pandora’s box, that it is right now not equipped to handle.

In Pakistan, army rule legalized by Supreme Court

The dismissal by Pakistan’s Supreme Court of petitions, challenging Pervez Musharraf from standing for re-election as President, even as he holds the post of Army chief, at one stroke removed any hope of a legal end to army rule in Pakistan. The 6-3 decision by Supreme Court judges on Friday in fact legalizes army rule in Pakistan.

On October 6, it appears that Pervez Musharraf will stand for President while also holding the post of chief of Pakistan’s army. In effect a victory for Musharraf will be a victory for the army and its continued dominance of Pakistani politics. Government lawyers, who first said that the President would resign from the army post if re-elected, later prevaricated.

The government, the Supreme Court, and the army were in fact rolled into one when under the The Oath of Judges Order 2000 the judges in Pakistan took a fresh oath of office swearing allegiance to military rule. Judges had to swear that they would not make decisions against the military rule.

The struggle for democracy will now move more dramatically to the streets. If earlier, opponents of Musharraf, political parties opposed to him, and the lawyers had hoped that the Supreme Court would rule in their favor, they will now have to take their protests to the street.

Musharraf is seeking re-election from a Parliament whose term ends in October this year, and his party has a majority in this parliament that was elected in 2002 at the peak of the General’s power. Once Musharraf is re-elected, and the army consolidate their rule, they will likely call for a general election, and they and their minions will decide who can contest and who will not. That may include former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, but will very definitely exclude another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

It is only the people of Pakistan who can prevent this bizarre sequence of events from unfolding. Close allies like the US have long ago thrown their weight behind Musharraf, and are evidently proud that their boy has made it past the petitions in the Supreme Court.

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Musharraf: I don't want to be unemployed !

Olympic Games, and the diplomatic charade over Myanmar

The think tanks have come up with a way to get the army in Myanmar to heel. Get China, which is a large investor in the country, to intervene. If China, declines to intervene, European Union countries should boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now that gives the Chinese something to think about !

The upshot is that the diplomatic community is passing the buck to China as it finds itself impotent against a repressive regime in Myanmar that at this point cares for nothing else than its survival in power.

The boycott of the Olympics is however unlikely to pan out, because other interests, stronger than the fate of the democratic movement in Myanmar, will come to the fore. Will the US for example agree to a boycott of the Olympics ? It views China as a strategic partner in Asia, far more important than old ally Taiwan, and has turned a blind eye to Chinese repression at home. Nor will the European countries like the UK and France agree to boycott the Olympic games, and give China a stinging rebuke over Myanmar.

The regime in China, and the army in Myanmar know that caught up in their business interests, the world has become impotent to fight against repression. So you will find China making some polite remonstrations while the army in Myanmar gets on with its brutal work. After it is done, it may even announce that it has backed off at the request of the Chinese.

In recommending a boycott, vice president of the European Parliament Edward McMillan-Scott, has shown a large heart. “The civilized world must seriously consider shunning China by using the Beijing Olympics to send the clear message that such abuses of human rights are not acceptable,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

But political decisions by large nations are not from the heart, but conceal cynical long-term calculations. As the nations of the world debate on a boycott, the massacre in Myanmar will be over. So our only option may be to sit back and watch the massacre. We did that in 1988.

UPDATE: Internet connectivity has been cut off in Myanmar, even as the army intensifies its crackdown on protesters. Blogs, instant messenger, and video sharing sites had provided locals an opportunity to get information on the clampdown to the world outside.

Related Articles:

In Myanmar, impotence against a brutal regime
India shouldn’t hide behind diplomatic niceties on Myanmar

With Hotmail, establish your identity online

Microsoft Corp. is offering Indian users the opportunity to have personalized e-mail ids that show up their identity, likes and dislikes, choice of sports, favorite celebrities etc etc.

If users are tired of an email id like rahul2007@hotmail.com, which does not say a lot about them, they now have the option to choose email ids from some 250 domains.

They can have multiple ids each emphasizing one aspect or the other of themselves, or even their moods at any time of the day, such as rahul@coolaquarius.in or rahul@bangalorerocks.in or rahul@ilovefootball.in or rahul@iwanttobeme.in.

Like all other products and services, it appears that email too is moving to becoming a lifestyle statement.

The email ids can be used on instant messenger and other Windows Live services.

“Our research shows that the youth today want their own identity and there are not enough email ids available to truly describe one’s personality. An email id is a part of one’s own identity and since people use email as the primary mode of contact, it is important to have an email id which is unique. This led us to roll out a comprehensive list of free personalized email ids that will allow users more choice in an email id with all the added features of their Windows Live Hotmail account,” said Jaspreet Bindra, Country Manager, Online Services Business, Microsoft India in a statement.

To sign up for personalized email ids, folks have to go to this site, select their domain, and sign up for the email id through Windows Live.

I was looking for anon@iam16andstunning.in but lucked out.

RC2 Corp. recalls toys again, patience runs thin

RC2 Corp., the vendors of Thomas & Friends wooden railway toys, has recalled another 200,000 of these toys, as the surface paints on the toys can contain excessive levels of lead, violating the federal lead paint standard, according to a statement from The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

This recall by RC2 Corp., of Oak Brook, Illinois comes three months after the company recalled 1.5 million toys in the Thomas & Friends series, after finding lead paint on the surface of the products, CPSC said in July.

In both cases the toys, said to have high lead content in their paint, were made in China, adding to concerns about the safety of toys and other products made in China, including those made in China for big US brands.

Mattel Inc., another toy maker surprisingly apologized last week for damaging China's reputation by its recall of toys made in China. 2.2 million toys were recalled over impermissible levels of lead, according to a statement issued by Mattel, though it said that its lead-related recalls were overly inclusive, including toys that may not have had lead in paint in excess of US standards.

Another 17.4 million toys from Mattel were also recalled because of loose magnets, but Mattel put it down to a flaw in its design.

This “mea culpa” by Mattel, exonerating the Chinese, seems surprising, even as companies like RC2 Corp. are still reporting high lead in the paint for their toys.

The fact remains that blue-chip American companies have been shipping products that have been hazardous for the kids who played with them. The toys covered under RC2’s recall of September 26, 2007 include stuff that was sold through toy stores and various retailers nationwide from March 2003 through September 2007 ! That means toys with lead paint were still shipped up to September 2007, even though the company found and recalled other toys with lead as way back as in June, 2007. Wasn’t RC2 supposed to check for lead the whole lot of toys it had on retail shelves ?

A recall does not absolve the companies of responsibility. They have to make sure that these incidents don’t happen again. If there is a problem with the Chinese supplier, please sort it out. If there are problems with your designs, sort that out too, and make sure your designs are foolproof.

Recalls don’t make you good corporate citizens. Prevention does, and in this regard companies were caught napping. Consumer patience may be running out.

Related Articles:

Mattel apologizes for defaming the Chinese !

India shouldn’t hide behind diplomatic niceties on Myanmar

India had this to say, even as the army in Myanmar has started a clampdown in the country:

“India is concerned at and is closely monitoring the Myanmar situation. It is our hope that all sides will resolve their issues peacefully through dialogue. India has always believed that Myanmar’s process of political reform and national reconciliation should be more inclusive and broad-based,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Navtej Sarna said, according to a report in The Hindu, a newspaper in India.

This diplomatic gloss over the repression in Myanmar is an insult to pro-democracy protesters in the Myanmar.

Worried about business interests in Myanmar, India is passing up the opportunity to play a leadership role in the region.

It is too much to expect from India to launch an attack on Myanmar, in the name of supporting the democracy movement in Myanmar. That sets a bad precedent, and unlike in the US invasion of Iraq, India doesn’t have the “weapons of mass destruction” fig leaf to try to justify its actions.

But India could at least come out openly against the brutal regime in Myanmar. This is a time for statesmanship, not political wheeler-dealing with neighbors.

India’s neighbors are looking to it and to China for leadership ! They are looking more to India, because India is a democracy !

Related article:

In Myanmar, impotence against a brutal regime

In Myanmar, impotence against a brutal regime

It is chilling and scary, and a re-run of similar such violations of people’s rights worldwide in our times, and in history. The shocking part of it is that the global community comes across as being as helpless as on most of the other occasions.

Myanmar security forces raided two Buddhist monasteries early Thursday, beating up and hauling away more than 70 monks after a day of violent confrontation with monk-led protesters left at least one dead, Buddhist clergy said, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune.

The army has begun a vicious crackdown against peaceful protesters, that largely include Buddhist monks and students. The army runs that country, and if they decide to beat up and brutalize hundreds of protesters they well can, and will do it.

We can do nothing about it ! Except watch in impotent rage.

We are no worse off than our leaders. The US, the European Union have issued a joint statement decrying the assault on peaceful demonstrators and calling on the junta to open talks with democracy activists. Other countries too have issued their protests. But the army does not falter in its resolve to repress the people’s movement.

It is a sad commentary on the way the world is organized, that the rulers in Myanmar can do just what they want within the country they run.

Something similar happened in 1989 against student protesters in Tiananmen Square in China. It happened before in Myanmar in 1988 when pro-democracy demonstrators were massacred. Is it that international conventions, treaties and laws prevent us from stopping this oppression ? Or is that despots have a better feel of world opinion and our leaders – that for all the proclamations of distress, leaders and countries do not find Myanmar democrats are worth struggling over.

China and Russia, among the few countries with influence over the junta, yesterday blocked U.S. and European efforts in the United Nations Security Council to condemn the regime for its crackdown, according to Bloomberg. India is plain watching from the sidelines. These countries have business interests in Myanmar, and clout with the junta there.

The world has not changed, not at all.

IBM has 100,000 downloads of Lotus Symphony, but too early to call

IBM Corp. has reported 100,000 downloads in one week of the beta version of Lotus Symphony, its free office suite, which is seen as a potential competitor to Microsoft Corp’s Office suite.

Symphony is based on the open source OpenOffice.org and Eclipse framework, and promotes the ODF for XML (Open Document Format), which is an XML standard approved by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) in Geneva. Microsoft’s Office suite supports Open XML, which failed to get fast-track approval as an ISO standard earlier this month.

Research firm Gartner Inc. however said in a research note that the Symphony release is not as significant as it may seem. Symphony is an IBM distribution of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications from the OpenOffice.org suite of productivity applications, much like the StarOffice suite available from Sun Microsystems Inc., and also distributed by Google, it pointed out.

As pointed out in a posting in this blog on September 17, despite IBM’s marketing muscle and a large customer base, the move by IBM may not really cut into Microsoft’s business. OpenOffice has been around free for many years, but its adoption has not been dramatic so far, and comes mainly from open-source die-hards.

Organizations have not widely implemented OpenOffice because their versions of Microsoft Office are still supported (Microsoft supports office versions for 10 years). Also, compatibility is not perfect, requiring some users to run Microsoft Office, Gartner said.

Competition is also coming to IBM and Microsoft from online hosted office applications from companies like Google Inc. Google has hinted at offering both online and offline versions of its software.

Related article:

IBM to counter Microsoft Office, but without a compelling strategy

Outsourcing outsourcing, or plain spin ?

India is outsourcing outsourcing, according to a report in the New York Times.

Ahead of the US elections, when outsourcing, and the loss of tech jobs in the US, will again likely figure as a big issue, Indian outsourcers have floated the new spin that they are in fact creating a large number of jobs in the US and Europe, nay outsourcing to the US.

Some link the creation of jobs in the US and Europe and other countries to the appreciation of the Rupee versus the US dollar, and staff shortages in India.

However, most of Infosys’ 75,000 employees are Indians, in India, says the New York Times report. India’s large outsourcers have about 60,000 staff each on an average in India, and having a couple of thousand staff in the US or Europe will not make the Rupee appreciation more manageable, or reduce staff turnover in India dramatically.

It is a case of making a large virtue out of a small necessity. Indian companies have been setting up operations in the US, Europe, and Mexico for some time, because their customers are demanding on-shore and near-shore capabilities in Europe and the US. They are also choosing low-cost locations in the US and Europe. When a company like Wipro Ltd. wants to set up operations on-shore in the US it will not go to pricey New York to set up shop, but to locations like Atlanta.

In Europe, which is slowly getting around to the idea of outsourcing, and its variant offshore outsourcing, customers are keen that their employees are protected. That means that Indian companies should be willing to take in staff from a customer – witness the deal between Infosys Technologies Ltd. and Royal Philips Electronics N.V.

So it is not that Indian companies are exporting jobs, or “outsourcing outsourcing”. They are just doing what they have been doing for years --- setting up operations closer to the customer, when required. Most of it used to be called on-site work earlier. As the H1-B visa regime got tighter in the US, or in Europe because of the need for language skills and to absorb staff from their customers, they have to hire locals. Infosys has employed local staff in Brno for over two years for their language skills.

It is hence a trifle arrogant for Indian outsourcers to claim that they are outsourcing jobs to the US and Europe. This is spin for the pols in Washington.

As of now about 85 to 90 percent of their staff are still in India, and it won’t change any time soon. Even after the appreciation of the Rupee and the rising wages in India, these companies continue to hire frenetically in India, because the comparative costs are still lower. Satyam, for example, is hiring 15,000 new staff before the end of the Indian fiscal year to March 31, 2008, according to this report in The Economic Times.

In contrast, Wipro Ltd. plans to hire 500 in Atlanta over the next three years, besides some 900 staff from its proposed acquisition of Infocrossing. Inc.

Spin about outsourcing to the US will not go down well with folks like Washtech who have been complaining that tech jobs in their thousands are moving from the US to India, and sure they have. By coming up with the lame one that they are also hiring a few hundreds in the US, Indian outsourcers can hardly hope to assuage the anxiety of anti-outsourcing lobbies.

Better to take the challenge headlong. Talk about the competitiveness offshore outsourcing is giving to the US. Inform the American people that a large proportion of employees in India are employed by Indian engineering centers of US companies. Tap into unstinted support from folks in the ITAA (Information Technology Association of America). But please, don’t insult people’s intelligence with the “reverse outsourcing” or “outsourcing to the US” spiel.

Related Article:

Indian outsourcers not floundering, not migrating

Amazon.com gets onto MP3 music bandwagon

Amazon.com Inc. has launched Public Beta of Amazon MP3, a digital music store, signaling competition for Apple Inc.’s iTunes, and eMusic, the two big players in the digital music downloads business.

While iTunes predominantly uses a proprietary DRM (digital rights management) for its music downloads, eMusic offers music downloads in the MP3 format, without DRM protection. Downloads without DRM come without copy restrictions and controls, and can be played on any audio device supporting the popular MP3 format.

Amazon MP3 has over 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists represented by over 20,000 major and independent labels, the company said in a statement. The downloaded files can be played on any audio device, Amazon said on Tuesday.

Most songs are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the 2 million songs priced at 89 cents, the company said. Songs on Amazon MP3 are encoded at 256 kilobits per second, which gives customers high audio quality at a manageable file size, according to Amazon.com.

Most large music labels have shied away from MP3 downloads, which is the reason why eMusic sells mainly music from independent labels. To make headway in this market, Amazon.com will have to introduce music guides and expert reviews to help users choose good quality music. The term independent labels has often come to mean amateurish music generated by out-of-garage operations, a problem many users encounter currently on eMusic.

Only Universal Music Group and EMI Music Publishing, among the big labels, are currently offering music at the Amazon.com store.

Amazon.com announced in May that it would open an online digital music store later this year, and also said that the music would be free of DRM controls. The company also invested in August in a music download firm called Amie Street Inc.

The MP3 music can be downloaded from Amazon here.

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Indian outsourcers not floundering, not migrating

Let me start by saying that Indian outsourcers are not floundering because of the appreciation of the Indian Rupee against the dollar. Yes, their rupee realizations will go down because of the appreciation of the rupee against the dollar. After all close to 60 percent of their business comes from the US.

But even as their realizations are going down, their costs of keeping staff on-site at client sites in the US is also coming down. Other dollar denominated costs are also coming down. This is not to say that these companies won’t be affected at all, but expect a few percentage points drop in margins.

As usual the top players like Infosys Technologies Ltd., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS), and Wipro Ltd. will report next month robust quarterly revenue and profits growth, that are the envy of their peers in the US and Europe.

Another myth that is doing the rounds is that companies like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro are setting up operations outside India to get around the appreciation of the Rupee. Earlier, it was said that these companies were doing it because of staff shortages in India.

Staff shortage is a real problem, but not as yet so acute as to expect Indian companies to migrate operations abroad. If folks like Infosys and Wipro are setting up operations in Mexico and Europe, it is because they need to offer near-shore facilities to customers to increase their comfort level. Being on similar time-zones with customers also helps. That is also the reason Wipro is setting up an operation in Atlanta.

To bag contracts in Europe, it also helps if these companies are willing to absorb local staff. That strategy has paid off for TCS for example with the contract it bagged from the Pearl Group Ltd.. It also paid off for Infosys when it bagged a business process outsourcing contract from Royal Philips Electronics N.V. this year in return for taking over Philips’ centers in Poland, Thailand, and India. Many years ago HCL Technologies Ltd. got call center business from British Telecom in return for acquiring the Apollo call center in Belfast.

But this does not represent a migration from India by Indian outsourcers. Companies like Wipro, TCS, Infosys have an average of about 60,000 staff each on their roles, and the overseas ventures will likely account for between 10-15 percent of staff.

That percentage of staff abroad is not a good enough hedge against a rising Rupee, and certainly hasn’t eased staff shortages in India. It has however given these companies the right mix of a global presence and distribution of locations for disaster recovery, without sacrificing on the still large cost benefits of delivering from India.

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Bangalore paying the price of economic boom ?

A celebration of British colonialism in India !

I have no objection to descendants of Genghis Khan deciding to hold a quiet, prayerful ceremony to commemorate their ancestor.

I have no objection to some British going quietly to Lucknow and other parts of India and paying homage at graves of some of their colonialist ancestors, as a private visit from close relations.

But I object to them making an excursion of it, coming in large numbers to make a spectacle, to commemorate 150 years of a colonial war against the Indians.

Because then they will be walking rough-shod over the sentiments of the people of India, whose ancestors were the victims of these British soldiers.

The decision of some British soldiers and civilians to go to Lucknow to honor soldiers that were involved in suppressing the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, which Indians regard as the first war of independence, has created a furor in India.

The visitors from the UK even “ hoped to install a plaque in a church in Meerut commemorating the bravery of British soldiers at the site of another key flashpoint during the 1857 rebellion”, according to a report by Reuters.

If the British visitors were moved by respect for their ancestors, over 150 years later at that, they could have gone to Lucknow in smaller numbers and paid their discreet homage. They could have done it every year, and nobody would have objected.

Instead they are planning a well-choreographed event. Would the Indians be entirely wrong if they apprehend that this visit is less about homage and more about revisionism in British thinking about its colonial role ?

The history of the West as colonizers is a part of their history that they should do their best to help others to forget. It was a period of untold brutality, and exploitation which people in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are still trying to come to terms with. It is a period that the British, the French, the Portuguese and other colonialists should also come to terms with in humility and contrition.

Today the West is horrified by the cruelty and massacre of people in the Africa and Asia. They hold their kerchiefs to their noses, figuratively, when referring to people like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. They forget that less than a 100 years ago, the Western colonialists were the butchers of Asia and Africa.

A public commemoration in Lucknow, India would be a celebration of that butchery !

Where are your manners Mr. Lee C. Bollinger ?

Columbia University’s President Lee C. Bollinger today told President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, “You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator”, before turning over the lectern to him to deliver a speech.

Bollinger’s description of the Iranian President may well be correct. Different people and different countries have different views of political leaders. If US President George Bush were to go to Iran or Iraq, a speaker there may well have told him, “ You exhibit all the signs of an interfering and petty war monger”, and they may have been right too.

But were your remarks to Ahmadinejad in good taste, Mr. Bollinger ? Were they civil ?

Ahmadinejad was invited to speak at Columbia University, and as a guest speaker at the university, your remarks to him were uncivil.

If you thought that the Iranian President was a petty and cruel dictator, you were entirely within your rights not to invite him to speak to your students, which is precisely what demonstrators outside had all along been demanding.

But once you had invited the man, don’t insult him. That reflects on you and the university, in fact on the US.

You also gave Ahmadinejad the opportunity to score points that a number of Muslims may be able to relate to - the President of a Muslim state was insulted at an American university.

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Gandhi dynastic rule inevitable in India

Rahul Gandhi, son of Sonia Gandhi, President of the ruling Congress party in India, has been appointed General Secretary of the party.

The two top party posts are now in the hands of the Gandhi family, confirming that Sonia Gandhi, widow of assassinated Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, is grooming Rahul for the position of Prime Minister of the country.

The current Prime Minister of the country, Manmohan Singh, is largely seen as a place-holder for the Gandhi family. Singh was elected to the post after Sonia Gandhi backed out, following objections to a “foreigner” holding the Prime Minister’s post. Sonia Gandhi, who took Indian citizenship, was born an Italian.

After the independence of the country in 1947, Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru became the Prime Minister. Except for three Congress Prime Ministers who were not from the family – Lal Bhadur Shastri, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and now Manmohan Singh, and stints by opposition leaders such as V.P. Singh, and Atal Behari Vajpayee, the top post was held by members of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

After Nehru, Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister after Shastri’s death. After Indira Gandhi’s assassination, her son Rajiv Gandhi assumed power. After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, it seemed for a while that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty was ebbing, with Narasimha Rao becoming Prime Minister and new power centers emerging.

The dynastic control within the Congress party has been achieved because the Congress has not thrown up leaders of a national stature. Some believe that the Nehru-Gandhi lobby never allowed new leaders to emerge.

India has a strong democracy, and voters have often ousted leaders, like Indira Gandhi, when they over-stepped their limits or failed to deliver. But the country's political parties lack democracy within the parties which has perpetuated family rule in the Congress, and a geriatric leadership in the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Congress currently runs a coalition government in India with the communists and regional parties. The Gandhis have proven to be crowd-pullers for the Congress, particularly with India’s rural masses. The main opposition, the BJP, is currently in disarray, and does not have a charismatic leader to lead the party in the next election. Rahul Gandhi, who was put in charge of local assembly elections in a key state of Uttar Pradesh earlier this year, was however a disappointment, as the Congress was routed by a local party.

Who rules in Iraq today ?

The U.S. military has arrested in Iraq an Iranian who it says is a member of an elite Iranian unit, called Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force, involved in training and equipping insurgents in Iraq. Yet the country’s President Jalal Talabani has blasted the U.S. for the arrest and called for his immediate release, according to a report in CNN.

Talabani said he is a civil servant who was on an official trade mission in Iraq's Kurdistan region, according to the report.

Talabani may be mistaken, but he is the elected President of Iraq. The appropriate course of action for the U.S. would hence be to release the Iranian detainee, out of deference to the Iraqi government.

The U.S., according to the administration in Washington, wants the elected government to take more responsibilities in Iraq, including reconciling rival groups.

By implicitly acting as if the elected government is a “puppet”, whose opinions are to be disregarded, the U.S. is contributing to the government’s falling credibility, and undermining democracy in Iraq.

Iran has meanwhile closed the border with the Kurdistan part of Iraq until the Iranian detainee is released. The border closure will likely impact economic activity in the Kurdistan region.

Iran President says no need for nuclear bomb

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran, Iran told CBS in an interview, ahead of his visit to the United Nations in New York, that Iran does not need a nuclear bomb.

“Any party who uses national revenues to make a bomb, a nuclear bomb, will make a mistake. Because in political relations right now, the nuclear bomb is of no use,” Ahmadinejad said talking to 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, through an interpreter in Teheran. “If it was useful, it would have prevented the downfall of the Soviet Union. If it was useful, it would have resolved the problems the Americans have in Iraq,” the Iranian President added.

The US and its allies have maintained that Iran is planning a nuclear bomb, and have even hinted at a pre-emptive strike at the country’s nuclear facilities.

Evidently trying to make a case for US hypocrisy in its position on Iran’s nuclear bombs, Ahmadinejad said, “So can you please tell me why the U.S. government is fabricating these bombs? Do you want to provide a more welfare, happiness to the people through the bomb? Are you going to deal with global poverty? Or do you want to kill people?”.

Neither confirming nor denying that Iran is supplying arms to insurgents in Iraq, a claim made by the US, Ahmadinejad said Iran is worried about “insecurity” inside Iraq, as that could pose a threat to Iran. “We are not interfering in Iraq. The Iraqi people are our friends. And the president, the prime minister, the speaker of the parliament are our friends. We don't need to interfere in Iraq,” the Iranian President said.

Ahmadinejad said the US should pull troops out of Iraq because the people there were opposed to the occupation. “First, they said that they want to topple the dictator and find WMDs [weapons of mass destruction]. They didn't find WMDs and there's no dictator there anymore. So the question is: What are American troops doing right now in Iraq?,” he asked.

The Los Angeles Times meanwhile reports that Ahmadinejad has emerged as a hero for Arabs, and has won admiration even among Sunni nations, for making it a point to defy the US and Israel. Iran is predominantly Shia, and is often accused of undercutting Sunnis in Iraq.

On Israel, Ahmadinejad told CBS that the decision for a two-state solution rests with the Palestinians. “We are saying that you should allow the Palestinian people to participate in a fair and free election and determine their own fate. Whatever decision they take, everyone should go with that,” he added.

The President did not however clarify on the contentious issue of whether Palestinian refugees, that were pushed out when Israel was formed, should also be allowed to vote in the election. The Iranian President has called for "wiping out" Israel, and described the Holocaust - the genocide of Jews during World War II - as a myth.

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That is our child on the advertisement !

At the risk of sounding immodest, I have a cute toddler, and often at malls or other public places, folks pull out their mobile phones, with built-in cameras, and take a snap of the child. Sometimes, they ask permission, which we have never given. But most often they just take snaps surreptitiously.

My concern throughout is what happens if the snap is used for commercial purposes. When are my wife and I going to spot a picture of our child advertising something or the other on the side of a bus or on a bill board or a newspaper ad ? I am sure this is a nightmare for many other parents around the world.

So what would be the legal recourse in this situation ? If we sue the advertiser, he will most probably turn around and say that he has got permission to use the snap because he has bought the copyright from the person who took the snap.

The gray area, on which there is still considerable debate, is whether for a shot taken at a public place, does the advertiser need to take permission from my daughter, or her parents since she is a minor, to use the snap ? Let me emphasize that this is no longer about copyright, but about a person's right to privacy, and the law does not appear to be uniform across all countries.

I think under current rules, the copyright of the photographer is protected but not the privacy of the people who appear in snaps of public places. That is why TV crews can have cameras in Times Square on New Year's Eve, or at the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, and beam the footage worldwide, without so much as a by your leave.

There are those who would argue, and I tend to agree with them, that there would never be any photojournalism if the TV crews or photographers had to take permission of all the folks snapped at every public event they cover, including a visit by the Pope, the swearing-in of the US President, an accident, or on the war front.

But I do believe that, even where the law does not prescribe it, advertisers should take permission from a person that figures prominently, or is featured, in the snap. Even if the person is smiling into the camera, which could imply tacit permission to having a snap taken, it may not mean that the person has agreed to the snap being taken for commercial use.

I am not discussing here misuse of snaps by pedophiles and other underworld types because there are separate laws to deal with that. My concern is about the commercial use of snaps taken in public places, that could offend one or more of the people who are in the snap.

In this connection there seems to be a gray area as is evident from this report in the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia’s Virgin Mobile phone company has been sued by a Texas family, after Virgin put up photos of their teenage daughter on billboards and website advertisements without her consent.

The snap, according to the family, was taken from Yahoo Inc.’s Flickr photo-sharing web-site. It had been put up there by the photographer, the girl’s youth counsellor, using a Creative Commons that allows others to reuse work such as photos without violating copyright laws, if they credit the photographer and say where the photo was taken, according to the SMH report. A link to the counsellor’s Flickr page appears at the bottom of the ad.

It may be argued that the Creative Commons license allowed Virgin Mobile to use the snap. Virgin also provided a link to its source on the Flickr page, which could be construed as giving the photographer credit. But did it do the right thing by the girl in the picture ? Was it correct to use the snap out of its context ? Should the girl sue Virgin or the photographer, who incidentally is a friend ? Who violated her privacy ? To find out how this discussion unfolds, check out this Flickr forum.

Orkut as theatre

Orkut, the social networking site hosted by Google Inc., is surely and quickly emerging more as a well-choreographed spectacle, than as a genuine and spontaneous forum for social interaction.

A caveat at the outset: this is not a critique of Orkut alone, but of all similar networking sites, that were set up with the promise of helping the youth to socialize and make friends.

The way Orkut has shaped out, nay its new raison d'être, is about making members look good to their friends and peers on the site. It is less about spontaneity and more about theatre.

Members upload their best snaps, chronicle their travels with well-selected snaps clicked in exotic locations, update peers on their wonderful new jobs, and generally convey through their sites that everything is hunky-dory and on the upswing at their end.

Social status on Orkut is predicated largely on the number of persons in your friends listing, even if you barely know some of the persons, or didn't exchange a call or a scrap with some of them for months.

Another measure of Orkut status is the number of scraps in your scrapbook, which most folks on Orkut treasure and accumulate, even though Orkut provides a facility to delete scraps.

The best way to increase the number of scraps is to scrap others as frequently as possible, even if they have nothing much to say, or if what had to be said could have been better said on phone. Hence you have husbands scrapping their wives to say they will be late for dinner, or as banal a comment as “Hey nice to c u here”.

The upshot is that nothing serious actually gets discussed on Orkut. If social networking in the physical world is about the sharing of common themes and ideas, bouncing out of new and unusual ideas, and generally trying to build community, Orkut has become by and large about mechanical scrapping and collection of friends.

There aren’t many new, original ideas of singular importance discussed on Orkut. There is nothing online like the “fiercely agonal spirit” described by the political theorist Hannah Arendt. In contrast, Orkut and other social networking is about conformity, being one with the crowd online, and doing your best to get accepted.

There have been frequent attempts to bring in political debate into Orkut, with communities like “I Hate Pakistan” or “Bush Sucks”(login required). But don’t expect a cerebral, well-informed debate on these communities.

On “Bush Sucks”, for example, besides referring to George Bush as responsible for killing thousands of people, members of Orkut said they hated Bush because “he was born”. Another “Orkuter” hates Bush because “he wants the abstinence of sex...before marrieg (sic)”, while still another dislikes the US President because “i don't know... just hate bush”.

The lack of depth in political commentary largely reflects the psyche of the generation that is currently on Orkut –-- they are primarily in their teens or early and mid 20s. This is the MTV generation that grew up with one credo – hedonism even if most of them can’t spell the word. For them Che Guevara is a picture on a T-Shirt to impress your girl with.

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Mattel apologizes for defaming the Chinese !

In surprise move, toy maker, Mattel Inc, apologized on Friday for damaging China's reputation by its recall of toys made in China, according to a report from AFP in Beijing.

The vast majority of those products that the company recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, and not through a manufacturing flaw in Chinese manufacturers, Thomas Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president of worldwide operations, told the head of China's top product quality agency, Li Changjiang, in the Chinese capital, according to the report.

A total of 17.4 million toys were recalled because of loose magnets, which Mattel put down to the design defect. Another 2.2 million toys were recalled over impermissible levels of lead, according to a statement issued by Mattel. The company is quoted by AFP as saying that its lead-related recalls were overly inclusive, including toys that may not have had lead in paint in excess of US standards.

The recall by Mattel fueled an already growing demand for greater controls over import of toys and other goods from China. Another toy vendor, RC2 Corp. of Oak Brook, Illinois recalled in June a number of its “Thomas and Friends” railway toys, as the surface paints on these toys contained leads, according to this release. There were also other reports of sub-standard imports from China including of contaminated toothpaste.

India’s health minister also told Parliament earlier this month that Chinese toys in the Indian market were toxic as they had very high levels of cadmium and lead.

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Why the US should stay in Iraq

On August 22, US President George Bush told war veterans that a US withdrawal from Iraq would lead to bloodshed and reprisals akin to those after the US withdrew from Vietnam.

Bush’s comparison of Iraq with the withdrawal in Vietnam has been described as inaccurate by many historians.

The scary fact remains however that should the US and its allies decide to pull out from Iraq, the country could in fact witness a blood-bath of violent sectarian squabbling.

There is a growing school of thought in the US and other countries that the strife among the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds is an internal problem of Iraq, better left to the new government in Iraq to solve. Some have even said that the government in Baghdad will move to reconcile the factions, only after it knows it does not have the US to prop it up.

Having invaded Iraq in 2003 with the multiple aims of removing Saddam Hussein, destruction of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that were never found, and to bring democracy to Iraq, the US cannot now wash its hands off the problems that the new dispensation has thrown up.

The country does not as yet have a government in Baghdad that is accepted by all in the country. It does not have a strong police force that is respected and seen as impartial across the country, and is still trying to rebuild an army that was disbanded after Saddam Hussein’s government was brought down.

The Iraq oil and gas law, also referred to as the Iraq hydrocarbon law, approved by the cabinet in February, has still to be passed by Parliament. Under the proposed regulations, oil revenues will go to a central fund distributed to all Iraqis in all regions and provinces according their populations.

The oil law has however become a political battleground between those who favor a more unified Iraq and those who want a decentralized federation where provincial governments have larger rights over the award of contracts and the revenue from the oil and gas under their geographical jurisdictions.

Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia is clearly a key threat to the US in Iraq. But it is facile to blame all the violence in Iraq, and the problems faced by US troops there, on Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia. The violence in Iraq comes from a variety of factors including feuding militias, both Shia and Sunni that have still not come under the control of the government in Baghdad.

Clearly the US has a long way to go in Iraq both on the military and political front.

The political initiatives so far have assumed that Sunni, Shia, and Kurd populations will eventually put their heads together in a pan-Iraqi nationalism. What if they decide to fight, regardless of the consequences, for the control of Baghdad and the whole country ? What if they decide to partition the country, and feud and kill over which land and which part of the oil reserves should go to them ?

Bush has made a lot of the Anbar Awakening, the optimistic name often given to the move by some Sunni militias in Anbar to join Americans in fighting Al Qaeda. The US will surely pamper Sunni militias to counter the Al Qaeda influence, and hope to also nudge them into reconciliation with the Shias and Kurds.

There is however also the possibility that the Sunnis have teamed up with the Americans for arms and cash to be used after the Americans are out. They must be aware that the US administration is under pressure at home to get US troops out of Iraq.

Having played the role of global policeman, and got into this quagmire, the US will now have to stay there. If it pulls out prematurely, and there is civil war, the blame will be pinned primarily on the US. Public memory is short, and there may be some who may even argue that Iraq was better off before the US ousted the butcher Saddam Hussein.

An Iraq going through a civil war will also be to the US’ disadvantage as it will provide opportunities to US enemies like Iran and Al Qaeda.

All in all a thankless task for the US going forward.

When Democrats in the US demand the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, it is very reminiscent of Vietnam. When the going was just too hot, and public support at home waned, the US pulled out from Vietnam leaving behind all the people and interests that had counted on America’s continued support. These included the puppet rulers, but the rest were ordinary people caught on the wrong side.

Didn’t many of the Democrats including Hillary Clinton vote in favor of the Iraq war ? They probably didn’t want to be spectators or protesters during those heady days when images flashed worldwide of a tall statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down. But when the body bags started coming home, they quite naturally lost their nerve.

Both Democrats and Republicans showed lack of foresight on the US invasion of Iraq. The Democrats could do worse by now demanding a premature withdrawal from Iraq.

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To: Pervez Musharraf From: Osama Bin Laden

Dear Pervez

I am more of a friend of yours than you perhaps imagine.

You may perhaps ask how I can be your friend when some of our Al Qaeda web sites have been announcing that we will shortly release a video in which we declare war on you and your army of nincompoops.

Come on Pervez, where is your sense of timing ? My threat comes just a couple of weeks before you seek re-election for President on October 6.

If earlier you were maligned by the democrats in your country for stifling democracy, and by your allies like the US for not being tough enough on me and my comrades, now you are the man the world will see as the bulwark against terrorism.

Now that I have declared war on you, you have become definitely more important. Pervez, the infidel Americans will say, must be doing a great job, for Laden to single him out for a video.

That will ensure that the resolve of George Bush to back you will only get stronger ! You can now deport Benazir Bhutto too when she returns on October 18. By then you would have also been re-elected as President. Your other opponents like Imran Khan will grumble and threaten to resign, but that will not shake your position as President. There is no room for democratic niceties during a war against terror.

I heard your lawyer promised your country's Supreme Court that you would resign from the post of chief of army staff after you were re-elected President. Are you silly ? The Americans will not let you, once I have spoken about my war against you and your army.

Before I conclude, thanks Pervez, for going easy on me and my people on the Pakistan-Afghanistan borders. I am not sure it was by design. Maybe it was the sheer lackadaisical approach of your apology for an army which has gone fat and slow in power.

Don’t let your success go to you head. I still have some 160 of your soldiers that we captured without firing a shot. We can continue to be pals, Pervez, but let’s not tell the Americans.

In fact the longer you cling to power, the more ham-fisted your attempts to prove your anti-Islamic credentials, the more disaffection you are generating. Did you see the results of that survey that showed me to be more popular than you in Pakistan.

Your brother

Osama bin Laden


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When atheists and secularists want to play God

In India, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, a state in south India, said that Lord Ram, a god in the Hindu pantheon, did not exist. The chief minister M. Karunanidhi heads the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) which has strong atheist underpinnings.

Karunanidhi was reacting to Hindus, the majority community in India, who are opposed to a canal that could damage Adam’s Bridge or Ram Setu between India and Sri Lanka.

The Hindus, quoting from a Sanskrit epic called the Ramayana, believe the bridge, which consists of a chain of limestone shoals, was built by supporters of Lord Ram to reach Sri Lanka, and rescue his abducted wife Sita from the asura king, Ravana.

Where is it said that this Ram was an architect, asked Karunanidhi who described the bridge as “natural” rather than man-made. Protests by agitated Hindus led to the burning of a bus killing two persons.

Move over to the UK. A Hindu woman working at Heathrow Airport, for caterers Eurest, was dismissed for wearing a nose stud, which she said was a mark of her Hindu faith, reports the BBC.

Last year, another Heathrow worker Nadia Eweida was suspended by British Airways for wearing a Christian cross, but later reinstated following condemnation by clerics and politicians, according to the BBC.

These moves violate people’s right to practice their faith. A nose ring or a cross can in no way be considered offensive.

Secularists are getting mixed up between secularism, which means that religion should not interfere in state matters, and the right of human beings to believe in what they want, and wear the symbols of their religious identity.

Last year, the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the wearing of full face veils, called the niqab, by Muslim women was a " a mark of separation and that is why it makes other people from outside the community feel uncomfortable," according to the International Herald Tribune and other newspapers.

Blair was closing ranks with Jack Straw, the leader of the House of Commons, who earlier in the month said he did not believe women should wear the full-face veil.

Earlier, the French parliament passed a law in March, 2004 that bans the wearing of religious symbols, such as the Islamic veil, and large Christian crosses in schools.

Secularists have expressed their opposition to the niqab as a sign of the oppression of women in Muslim society, but a number of Muslim women have said that it is an expersssion of their identity. Which should serve as a reminder that other religious communities and cultures should not be always judged by Western standards.

These remarks and rules also demonstrate that atheists and secularists can at times be as intolerant of other people’s views as fundamentalists and fascists.

To be sure, the secularists and progressive Muslims are within their rights to push for change, but not by law, expuslions, and public pronouncements by officials of the state. That goes against another prized Western tenet – the separation of the State and religion.


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A new photo album, and reflections on Hannah Arendt’s “The banality of evil”

The phrase “ the banality of evil” was used by philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt to refer to Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi criminal, arrested and put to trial by a court in Israel.

Arendt, who covered Eichmann’s trial, raised the questions whether evil was something radical, or as banal as people just following orders, playing safe, or going along uncritically with mass opinion.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday unveiled a new addition to its collection -- a personal photo album containing 116 pictures taken between May and December, 1944, chronicling the life of SS officers and other officials at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

The images capture SS guards and Nazi officials relaxing and enjoying time off—hunting, singing, trimming Christmas trees, and more --— all while Jews were being murdered at rates as fast as anytime during the Holocaust. The album was created and owned by Karl Höcker, an adjunct to camp Kommandant Richard Baer, according to a statement by the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

When you browse through Höcker’s album you come across pictures as ordinary, and as banal, as SS officer Karl Hoecker shaking hands with his sheep dog Favorit, SS officer Karl Hoecker lighting a candle on a Christmas tree, Nazi officers and female auxiliaries, called Helferinnen, posing on a wooden bridge in Solahutte, and sing-alongs with an accordion player.

The lives of these SS and Nazi officials is in glaring contrast to the massacre of Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau. To be sure, these men and women frolicking, indulging in normal human pastimes, must have been aware of the inhumanities, the Holocaust perpetrated by them and their colleagues on the Jews!

Did they not feel guilt for what was happening in Auschwitz-Birkenau ? Were they cruel monsters pretending to lead normal soldiers’ lives ?

Or was it just the banality of evil again – the uncritical following of orders, and going along with the others that Arendt warned us about.

I say warned, because it can happen again, anywhere in the world.

"He did his duty...; he not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law,", wrote Arendt in “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, a book that emerged from her coverage of the trial of Eichmann for The New Yorker.

A lot of the crimes against humanity today come from such banal people....who were just obeying orders.

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Google Reader now multilingual

Google Inc. is offering multi-lingual support on its Google Reader, its web-based news feed reader.

Google Reader, which was only available in English, from Sept 18 supports French, Italian, German, Spanish, English (UK), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, and Korean.

The multi-lingual support for Google Reader is in line with the strategy of Google and other Internet companies like Yahoo Inc. to offer multi-lingual support for most of their services and tools, to make their services relevant in non-English speaking markets.

Blogs have also become an international phenomenon, and they are not constrained by language or nationality, wrote Google’s Product Marketing Manager Kevin Systrom on Google’s blog. In fact, blogs have become an important way to bring rise to independent reporters and writers, and there are more and more people who wish to read blogs in other languages, Systrom said.

Germany too will get iPhone on Nov. 9

As part of Apple Inc.’s marketing thrust into Europe ahead of the Christmas buying season, the company said on Wednesday it has partnered with network operator T-Mobile to introduce the iPhone in Germany on Nov. 9, the same date scheduled for the launch of the iPhone in the UK.

T-Mobile is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG. Apple announced Tuesday that O2 (UK) Ltd., a wireless carrier operator in the UK had been selected to offer the iPhone in the country.

As in the US, where it has an exclusive deal with AT&T Inc., Apple has also fixed exclusive deals in the UK and Germany. The popularity of the iPhone gives Apple the bargaining power to get around the insistence of service providers on controlling what software and hardware goes into consumer mobile devices.

The iPhone will however be more expensive in Europe than in the US. The phone will cost €399 (about US$558) in Germany and £269 ($538) in the U.K., with service contracts, ranging from 18 to 24 months thrown In the U.S., the price of the phone was brought down to $399, down from $599 at launch.

Apple is also expected to announce this week that the contract for France has gone to Orange, a mobile phone and Internet access business of France Télécom SA.

A number of hackers have tweaked with the iPhone's software to make it usable with the networks of other operators. These moves don't sit well with Apple's carrier partners who pay whopping fees for their exclusivity in each country. The higher prices of the iPhone, announced in Europe so far, coupled with expensive tariff plans, may provide an incentive to import these phones from the US, and unlock them for use on other networks, some analysts said.

The iPhone will also not be able to take advantage of faster third-generation (3G) mobile networks in Europe because 3G chip sets hog power, The New York Times reported, quoting Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs. By late next year, the iPhone may be able to take advantage of these networks, though in the meantime it could use Wi-Fi, a wireless local area network (LAN) standard, for high-speed Internet.

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Advertising in print newspapers on the decline

As more people go online, and news is available for free for multiple sources, will it be a matter of time before print newspapers go the way of the dinosaur ? Will newer sources of news, including blogs, replace the online editions of traditional newspapers ?

Advertisers seem to think so.

Data available from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) in Arlington, Virginia suggests that advertising in print is on the decline. Spending for print ads in newspapers in the second quarter of this year totaled US$10.5 billion, down 10.2 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to the NAA.

This data seems to bear out the forecasts by many pundits that as print gets less popular, advertising dollars will move away from print editions. But it hardly provides conclusive evidence that print newspapers are dying. It could be just that some advertising is moving to other newer opportunities, including online. It may be just the same as when TV advertising started cutting into newspaper advertising decades ago.

However whatever advertising is moving away from print editions of newspapers is not necessarily going to their online sites.

Advertising expenditures for newspaper Web sites increased by 19.3 percent to US$796 million in the second quarter versus the same period a year ago, according to preliminary estimates from the NAA.

This sounds great in isolation. But the newspapers that saw a decline of about US$1 billion in advertising in the second quarter, witnessed an increase of less than $200 million in advertising from its online properties.

As a result, total advertising expenditures at newspaper companies were $11.3 billion for the second quarter of 2007, an 8.6 percent decrease from the same period a year earlier, according to NAA.

The NAA puts down the reduced advertising revenue for newspapers to cyclical swings in the U.S. economy, as well as structural changes in the businesses of major advertisers, which continue to affect print advertising revenue.

NAA is a nonprofit organization representing the newspaper industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada.

Online editions of established newspapers appear to have established their popularity, perhaps because of their strong brands as print newspapers. More than 59 million people (37.3 percent of all active Internet users) visited newspaper web sites on average during the second quarter of 2007, a record number that represents a 7.7 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to custom analysis provided by Nielsen//NetRatings for the NAA.

As print newspaper move online, they are going to need to learn a new bag of tricks, including embedding video, and offering podcasts from their sites. These technologies would require a totally different set of skills than are what are currently found in traditional print newspapers. All of a sudden reporters, whose faces we rarely saw, and whose voices were never heard, are going to have to metamorphose into sleekly dressed and groomed TV reporters.

Already as print advertising looks shaky going forward, and reader’s preferences shift, a number of publications, including IDG’s Infoworld, have moved online.

A caveat about the NAA data. It is primarily about newspapers in North America. Print newspapers are far from declining in a number of markets, including India, where there has been a sudden rush of new print publications. Established publishing companies, and start-ups have also set up online news sites.

In India, for example, the current transformation appears to be less about the transition by users from print to online reading, and more about more readers getting into the mainstream. As long as Internet usage is limited to urban elites, and is cheaper than buying a print publication, the outlook is very positive for print, analysts say.

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Apple iPhone will be available in the UK through O2

Apple Inc. ended weeks of speculation, by announcing Tuesday that it has selected O2, a leading wireless carrier in the UK, to exclusively offer the iPhone in the UK. The iPhone will debut in the UK on November 9, and comes bundled with unlimited free Wi-Fi access.

Apple sold its one millionth iPhone 74 days after it went on sale in the US on June 29, the company said. In the US, the company has an exclusive tie-up with AT&T for the iPhone.

By appointing exclusive carriers for each country for the much coveted iPhone, Apple is able to get better deals with the operator including better commercial terms, according to analysts.

AT&T, which in the past has demanded control over what software and applications go into end-user devices, had had to concede ground to Apple. In that sense Apple has shifted the balance of power in the mobile carrier market.

iPhone users in the UK will be able to activate their new iPhones using Apple's iTunes software running on a PC or Mac computer, without having to wait in a store while their phone is activated. Once iPhone is activated, users can then easily sync all of their phone numbers and other contact information, calendars, email accounts, web browser bookmarks, music, photos, podcasts and TV shows just like they do when they sync their iPods with iTunes, Apple said.

iPhone will be sold exclusively in the UK through Apple's retail and online stores, O2 and The Carphone Warehouse's retail and online stores. iPhone will be available in an 8GB model for 269 pounds sterling (inc VAT) and will work with either a PC or Mac. Three iPhone tariffs plans will be available from O2 starting at 35 pounds, which all include unlimited anytime, anywhere mobile data usage and free unlimited use of the Wi-Fi network, Apple said.

O2 UK is part of Telefonica O2 Europe which comprises mobile network operators in the UK, Ireland and Slovakia along with integrated fixed and mobile businesses in Germany and the Czech Republic. Telefonica O2 Europe also owns 50 percent of the Tesco Mobile and Tchibo Mobilfunk joint venture businesses in the UK and Germany respectively as well as having 100 percent ownership of Be, a leading UK fixed broadband provider. It is not clear at this point whether O2 will be the carrier as Apple expands in other European markets.

With the November 9 launch, Apple is in good time for Christmas shopping in the UK, where, if the experience in the US is any pointer, the iPhone will figure in a number of Santa's lists.

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Musharraf: I don't want to be unemployed !

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is very worried he may be out of a job as developments unfold in Pakistan. He wants to keep his army job just in case he is not re-elected as President of the country.

The General, now in his 60s, has a wife and family to look after. The Pakistani people have to ensure their leader does not slip at his age into the ranks of the unemployed.

The very reasonable General has, in fact, offered to quit his army job if he gets elected as President.

If elected for a second term as president, Musharraf shall relinquish charge of the post of chief of army staff soon after elections and before taking the oath of president for the second term, lawyer Sharfuddin Pirzada told the Supreme Court today, according to a report by AFP.

Musharraf is facing a petition in the Supreme Court objecting to the President standing for presidential elections in uniform. The country's Election Commission has changed the rules to make it easier for Musharraf to seek a new five-year presidential term while retaining his post as army chief. It removed a rule barring government employees, including army officers, from running for political office.

The offer by Musharraf’s lawyer to the Supreme Court will ensure that the general continues to wield power even if he loses the election, pleasing some of his supporters including the US which believes that Musharraf’s continuation is critical to its war against terror.

In a country where the army has considerable influence and has toppled elected governments, Musharraf will likely wield real power, with a say in running the country.

Musharraf’s current term in office ends November 15. Musharraf’s re-election bid will be voted for by members of the national parliament and provincial councils, where his party has a strong presence. Opposition parties have asked for early parliament elections, after which the President should seek re-election. The parliament elections are due next year.

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IBM to counter Microsoft Office, but without a compelling strategy

IBM Corp. will be offering online office productivity applications such as a word processor, spread sheet, and business presentation software, according to various reports.

The package, called Lotus Symphony, will be offered free to download to users, starting Tuesday, said The New York Times.

By this move IBM will once again be competing with Microsoft Corp. in the office applications space.

Google Inc. is also offering a software suite including word processing, spreadsheet and calendar management programs. The company is adding soon a business presentation program to compete with Microsoft’s PowerPoint. However the software and the data generated by users on this software remains online.

The software offered by IBM will be open source software from OpenOffice.org, according to the reports.

Despite IBM’s marketing muscle and a large customer base, the move by IBM may not really cut into Microsoft’s business. OpenOffice has been around free for many years, but its adoption has not been dramatic so far, and comes mainly from open-source die-hards.

Microsoft, planning to stay with its software license revenue model, has pushed a “ software and service” model that requires users to still buy Microsoft Office software and install it on their machines. Microsoft’s Office Live provides online extensions to the software.

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New York Times should make its Times Reader free as well

The New York Times will stop charging from September 19 for online content covered under its TimesSelect program. Until this move TimesSelect content on the newspaper’s online site, including some opinion columns, was charged for separately.

The move by The New York Times reflects how newspapers are trying to come to terms with the online world, and the implicit demand from users that information should be free.

There are reports that The Wall Street Journal, a subscription-only financial news site may slowly move to offering more if not all content free, after it is acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

In the circumstances, newspapers will have to rely more on online advertising for online revenues, while charging only for the print editions. As more readers move online, the revenue mix is getting skewed in the direction of advertising revenue, and away from subscriptions.

The TimesSelect was introduced two years ago by the newspaper in a bid to make some money from readers on select content. But this hybrid model, which combined subscription revenue with advertising revenue online, did not really pay off.

The newspaper made about US$10 million in revenue annually from TimesSelect, but it lost out on a number of readers, including those coming through search engines, who were not willing to pay for the content, but would have been an attractive target for advertisers.

The New York Times also introduced almost a year ago the Times Reader, an offline reader for the online newspaper. Readers can download content into the reader, and then read it offline in an easily navigated and flexible format. The New York Times was offering TimesSelect free with the Times Reader.

With TimesSelect now free, subscribers of the reader may not renew their monthly subscription of $14.95. The Times Reader proposition was not very compelling when the New York Times started charging for it, and is now less so. The Times Reader provides an interesting reading experience, but to many it hardly justifies paying $14.95 per month for it.

The newspaper is better off making the Times Reader also free, making up for lost subscriptions with advertising. The Times Reader would then be a strategic tool in the New York Times’ contest for eyeballs and advertising revenue.

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eMusic’s foray into audiobooks may help aspiring writers

eMusic’s foray into audiobooks may help aspiring writers

eMusic’s entry into the audiobooks market may help aspiring writers get an audience, though most of the top book publishing houses may stay away from the digital download site.

Starting September 18, audiobooks will be available from eMusic at a price of US$9.99, which is lower than the price for audiobooks at competitor Audible Inc. The music download site will likely try to further offer bargain prices on its audiobooks as it has done with its music downloads.

As eMusic uses the MP3 format and does not support DRM (digital rights management), it will very probably not have support from most of the big publishing companies, a problem that it faced with most of the large music labels, which shied away from offering their music on its site.

eMusic’s strategy around MP3 and DRM did not hurt the company. It is now the second largest vendor of online music downloads after Apple’s iTunes. That was because eMusic focused on small labels and aspiring musicians who were ready to trade DRM for an opportunity to feature on a popular site. Its low price also attracted a large number of users.

Apple Computer Inc. and Audible Inc., which is a large online site for downloading audiobooks, both use DRM technology. The DRM in downloads from iTunes blocks their use in devices other than the iPOD or iPhone.

Opposed for ideological reasons by a large section of Internet users, DRM is also found to be cumbersome by many who would like to rip CDs as often as they need to, and play the downloads on a variety of devices. Music companies, in particular, are seen to be using the online download route to curb the misuse of purchased music. Some of these restrictions are a far cry from the freedom still available to users to rip and mix, and copy to various devices tracks from traditional music CDs.

eMusic may hence be planning a re-run of its strategy with music. They are likely to aim at smaller publishers or aspiring authors some of whom may to start with just focus on audiobooks, rather than more expensive print editions of their books. eMusic has emerged as a filter for people looking for music, and now audiobooks, beyond what is sold by the big brands.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, while promoting lesser known artists, and now authors, eMusic will have to do a much better job than it is doing now in selecting talent, making its recommendations, and generally playing as a mentor to its customers.

eMusic will offer more than a thousand audiobooks from major audiobook publishers including Blackstone Audio, Hachette, Naxos Audiobooks, Penguin and Random House, with hundreds more to be added each week, it said in a statement. Subscribers will find regular reviews of the books by critics from top newspapers and magazines, it added.

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Finding gold on the Net is a long shot

Alert: Microsoft loses anti-trust case in Europe

Microsoft Corp. has lost an appeal against an anti-trust ruling by the European Commission in 2004.

A European Union court dismissed Microsoft Corp.'s appeal against the EU antitrust ruling that ordered it to share communications code with rivals and sell a copy of Windows without Media Player, according to the Wall Street Journal. It also upheld a 497 million euros (US$689.7 million) fine.

Finding gold on the Net is a long shot

Do a search for “reggae” on YouTube and you find a large number of videos put up by aspiring musicians hoping for their place in the sun. Try a search for “Fado”, and you will of course find some clips from the celebrated Portuguese singer Amalia Rodrigues, but you will also find a number of amateur groups playing their own rendition of these songs.

Video sharing sites like YouTube, blog hosting sites like Blogger and WordPress, are a great opportunity for people to unleash their creativity and be heard or read. In a sense, it is “The Long Tail” unleashed, as the cost of putting your stuff out on the Internet has crashed dramatically, and the theoretical reach multiplied.

The Long Tail is the title of an article in October, 2004 in Wired Magazine by its editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson, who later wrote a book by the same title.

The gist of the theory as explained by Anderson in his blog is that as the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare, he adds.

Video sharing, blogging sites, and other web sites dispensing entertainment have indeed made it possible for a lot of people, who believe they are creative, to go out and try to make an impact, at a very little cost. Publishing and distributing the content of this blog would have been close to impossible for me say five years ago when we were still tied to the economics of the print world.

But one upshot of the Long Tail is that apart from a few good upcoming musicians or writers or photographers or poets that are visible on the Internet, there are thousands of wannabes with little or no talent. This leads to a whole lot of clutter competing for our attention on the Internet. To find gold on the Internet you have to be as patient as panning for gold in an ocean.

Great, but as yet unknown talent, may also go unnoticed in the deafening contest for our attention. To be noticed and rewarded, the aspiring artist or writer may have to either advertise extensively, spending a lot of money, or yes, go up to one of the record labels or publishing houses, and hope they will sign a contract with him.

To get a break through the Internet, a musician still depends to a large extent on getting backed by the big brands, or some of the mid-range brands that have emerged. If you are a blogger, your chances are far higher if you are hosted, for example, by one of the top publications like BusinessWeek or CNet or Computerworld.

There is one possible way out for wannabes whose pluck more than make up for their lack of funds. Look out for new gatekeepers, that will filter out the chaos and the rubbish that abounds on the Net, and will, in fact, be your new age mentors and guides.

I am talking about folks like eMusic who offer Long Tail music on their web-site. These are the kind of companies that can do people on the Internet as well as upstart artists and writers a favor, by building a list of recommendations for the confused user.

But before they can emerge as effective gatekeepers to the Internet, these folks will have to build their own brands, and their credibility as mentors. eMusic has certainly built a solid brand, made all the more strong by AT&T offering downloads from eMusic on mobile phones. But it still has a long way to go to become a comprehensive source of advice on what music to buy.

Reviews by other users of the site are nice to read sometimes, but they don’t carry the same credibility as eMusic giving a recommendation on a musician, and giving a detailed explanation and reasons for the recommendation. eMusic does it for some of its music, but not all. For the rest you are generally groping in the dark, basing your buy-or-dump decision entirely on the few seconds preview eMusic offers.

If new and credible gatekeepers don’t emerge fast enough to help us find our way through the burst of creativity on the Internet, it will be an opportunity for the big brands again, whether the record labels or publishing houses, to act as arbiters of quality and good taste. After all, these are the brands we have traditionally used and trusted in some measure. But these established brands, with their focus on big hits, will certainly snuff out the creativity of the smaller guys on the net.

Ram Setu: the importance of religious symbols

It is a “chain of limestone shoals” between India and Sri Lanka, variously called Adam’s Bridge, Ram Bridge, and Ram Setu. To the Hindus it is the bridge built by Lord Ram’s supporters in the Ramayana.

It is currently agitating Indians to extreme lengths, that some are questioning whether the epic Ramayana was actually a record of historic events. Even TV channels in India are plunging into what should have been, if at all, a debate by religious scholars and historians.

The immediate cause of this crisis is that the Indian government has has approved a multi-million dollar Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project that aims to create a ship channel across the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka.

The debate about the historical accuracy of the Ramayana and Ram Setu, I think misses the point. Any religion has its sacred spots that come from a set of beliefs. These spots provide the points of reference to that religion, and are a part of the iconography of a religion. For centuries the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which stands on the spot where Christian believe Jesus was born in a manger, has been a source of inspiration and piety for millions of Christians worldwide.

So why not the Ram Setu ?

The separation of state from religion requires that religion should not interfere with the way a country is run, but does not require you to deny religion. For many communities, including communities in India, their religion describes their worldview, prescribes certain behavior, and proscribes others. So religion is about building communities, about promoting social stability through a set of rules of conduct.

The dangers come when a religion assumes a certain exclusivity that is believed to be derived from God, and gets intolerant of other religions. Every religion has gone through these phases in India and abroad. The Spanish Inquisition from 1478 was born out of this intolerance, and so is a lot of Islamic fundamentalism.

The demand that Ram Setu be protected is not a reflection of intolerance. It is a demand from a religious community that the government preserve a place that it considers sacred. That parties like the Bhartiya Janata Party (known to have some intolerant people in their ranks), have espoused this cause, does not make the demand per se intolerant.

To be sure, there are development objectives to be met. The channel will cut down shipping time, as many ships will no longer have to go around Sri Lanka, to traverse between the east and west of India. Sure, there may be room for compromise, but whatever scope was there may have already been snuffed by intemperate comments about the Ramayana.

If Net Neutrality goes, the world may no longer be flat

Network neutrality has ensured so far that we are able to access any web site we want, at the same speed, whether it is a corporate web-site in the US, the site of an out-of-garage operation, or the web site of a vendor in India, Ghana, or anywhere in the world.

This neutrality ensured that the Internet was a great leveller. Besides giving a fillip to businesses selling into the US and other developed economies, including small operations like garment and handicraft makers, it also gave a fillip to blogging, because now we were communicating with anybody, anywhere in the world at little or no cost.

The world may however no longer be flat if new rules come into force in the US aiming to create a two-tier Internet. The Internet service providers (ISPs), who have invested in the big pipes that transfer Internet packets, plan to speed up or slow down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.

If you want traffic to your site to be faster, you will have to pay the owners of the pipes for premium, high speed movement of data to and from your site. It also means that video and audio content providers that pay for this premium service, or services operated by the owners of the pipes, would have access to the faster lane, while merchants, bloggers, and various content providers who can’t afford the fast lane, will just have to putter along the slow lane.

Once again an opportunity to create an equal opportunity society may be missed. Not only will the digital divide in the US get excarcebated, but it will have global ramifications, between the “haves” and “have nots” among countries.

Economies like India, China, which tend to be US-centric in their markets, may find themselves perhaps slipping into the slow-lanes of network traffic, and consequently the slow-lane of business.

The removal of net neutrality will also make cable and telephone companies like AT&T and Time Warner the filters, the gatekeepers in the two-tier Internet economy, deciding which traffic will flow faster, and which won’t, based purely on considerations of profit. Free access and disemmination of information could be in jeopardy, as also probably consumer choice and the free market.

The battle is just beginning. Weighing in favor of the network operators, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday said that “some regulatory proposals offered by various companies and organizations in the name of “net neutrality” could deter broadband Internet providers from upgrading and expanding their networks to reach more Americans.” The DoJ was responding to a US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Notice of Inquiry regarding broadband practices.

The DoJ said in a statement that precluding broadband providers from charging content and application providers directly for faster or more reliable service could shift the entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers. If the average consumer is unwilling or unable to pay more for broadband Internet access, the result could be to reduce or delay critical network expansion and improvement.

The Internet has until now been about freedom of expression (blogs etc.), freedom of communication (email, instant messenger etc.), freedom to socialize (social networking sites), and freedom of choice (online commerce). That could fade away or get compromised going forward. We are all up against commercial realities, unless US lawmakers intervene. The party may be getting over.

Internet traffic growth slowing down, according to MINTS

Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies (MINT) has reported that the growth rate of Internet traffic is down to 50 to 60 percent in mid-2007 both in the US and the rest of the world.

In spite of the widespread claims of continuing and even accelerating growth rates, Internet traffic growth appears to be decelerating, according to the report.

In the US, there was a brief period of "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days" back in 1995-96, but already by 1997 growth subsided towards an approximate doubling every year, and more recently even that growth rate has declined towards 50-60 per year, it added.

As this passage is being written (in August 2007), there are concerns about "exafloods" of traffic, primarily video, that might overwhelm the Internet, according to the report. This is motivating calls for new business models, with many implications for issues such as "net neutrality". But there is very little solid data about what is happening on the network, and many conflicting estimates, the MINT report said.

The MINTS project is supported by the Digital Technology Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, and the ADC Chair held by Andrew Odlyzko, which comes from an endowment donated by the ADC Foundation.

Internet reflects, nay amplifies social problems

The Internet is a mirror to the population that uses it, Google Inc.’s vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton Cerf told the BBC in August. “When you have a problem in the mirror you do not fix the mirror, you fix that which is reflected in the mirror”, Cerf said while rejecting regulation of the Internet.

To my mind, to stretch Cerf’s metaphor a little, the Internet is like a concave shaving mirror. It magnifies and throws up every blemish in society, because it offers a far greater degree of anonymity, and much greater and easier access to people.

In the old days, I had to worry about having my pocket picked by a person next to me in the subway or a bus or in the park. These days, using the Internet, a person as far away as Lagos or Moscow can dip into my pocket.

Recently I put up my laptop for sale on a popular auction site. It was my first auction, and I was delighted that someone had made me an offer within less than an hour of my posting my item ! Then the bidder got in touch with me and requested me to do him a favor and ship the laptop to his dear friend in Nigeria in time for his birthday. Incidentally, I has specified when placing the laptop for auction, that I would not arrange to ship the product.

The bidder however persisted, and even sent me an online link to his bank that showed that the funds for paying for the laptop had been kept in escrow, for disbursement as soon as I proved that the item had been shipped to his dear friend. Unfortunately, when I traced the bank web-site to its owner, I found that it wasn’t owned by a bank, but by a resident of London.

After seven days wasted, and canceling the transaction, I put up the item for auction again. Guess what ? I had a bidder again within the hour. No two guesses: the bidder wanted his girlfriend in Benin to have it in time for her birthday.

I still don’t know, and frankly don’t care who were the folks I dealt with. Were they really Nigerian scammers, as some pundits told me ? The rub is that I had been promised by the auction site that I could theoretically reach customers throughout the world. All I had succeeded in doing was attracting to myself anonymous criminal elements from around the world.

The recent hacker attack on the Bank of India site in India, and others in other countries, testify that we are at a big risk on the Internet when we least expect it. According to this report, you just had to go to the Bank of India web-site and your computer was hosed with a whole lot of compromising malware and Trojans.

Even my email is not safe. I am not talking only about folks dropping viruses and Trojans through my mailbox. Security software folks like Symantec have made a great business out of their ability to block and remove this vermin.

I am talking about the large variety of offers, some offering to cure my sexual debilitations they are privy to, others promising to keep me in a diazepam-induced Nirvana for as long as I can pay for it, and still others thoughtfully offering me a chance to share in a rich widow’s inheritance.

Apart from their being a nuisance, there is the chance that somebody may be gullible enough to be inveigled into these deals. There are a large number of reports that confirm that a lot of folks in the US have in fact got into deep trouble trying to share in someone’s loot.

The Internet gives us the most valuable and scary insights into the depths human nature can sink to, when given global access and anonymity. Does this mean that we should shut down the Internet ? No ways, I make my money of it, I download music far faster than if I had waited for the local brick-and-mortar store to stock it, I can research information on the net, I can chat up distant friends on instant messengers, people under repressive regimes can now communicate with the outside world !

The point is that we have to be very, very careful, starting with the realization that it is not a brave new world out there in cyberspace.

The Internet and its promise of Second Life is not the promise of liberation from a cruel terra firma. It is the same sad world we live in, only a lot more unsafe, because the criminals can now get you in the privacy and security of your home. Forewarned, as the old saw goes, is forearmed. Irrational exuberance could have deadly results.

Internet reflects, nay amplifies social problems

The Internet is a mirror to the population that uses it, Google Inc.’s vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton Cerf told the BBC in August. “When you have a problem in the mirror you do not fix the mirror, you fix that which is reflected in the mirror”, Cerf said while rejecting regulation of the Internet.

To my mind, to stretch Cerf’s metaphor a little, the Internet is like a concave shaving mirror. It magnifies and throws up every blemish in society, because it offers a far greater degree of anonymity, and much greater and easier access to people.

In the old days, I had to worry about having my pocket picked by a person next to me in the subway or a bus or in the park. These days, using the Internet, a person as far away as Lagos or Moscow can dip into my pocket.

Recently I put up my laptop for sale on a popular auction site. It was my first auction, and I was delighted that someone had made me an offer within less than an hour of my posting my item ! Then the bidder got in touch with me and requested me to do him a favor and ship the laptop to his dear friend in Nigeria in time for his birthday. Incidentally, I has specified when placing the laptop for auction, that I would not arrange to ship the product.

The bidder however persisted, and even sent me an online link to his bank that showed that the funds for paying for the laptop had been kept in escrow, for disbursement as soon as I proved that the item had been shipped to his dear friend. Unfortunately, when I traced the bank web-site to its owner, I found that it wasn’t owned by a bank, but by a resident of London.

After seven days wasted, and canceling the transaction, I put up the item for auction again. Guess what ? I had a bidder again within the hour. No two guesses: the bidder wanted his girlfriend in Benin to have it in time for her birthday.

I still don’t know, and frankly don’t care who were the folks I dealt with. Were they really Nigerian scammers, as some pundits told me ? The rub is that I had been promised by the auction site that I could theoretically reach customers throughout the world. All I had succeeded in doing was attracting to myself anonymous criminal elements from around the world.

The recent hacker attack on the Bank of India site in India, and others in other countries, testify that we are at a big risk on the Internet when we least expect it. According to this report, you just had to go to the Bank of India web-site and your computer was hosed with a whole lot of compromising malware and Trojans.

Even my email is not safe. I am not talking only about folks dropping viruses and Trojans through my mailbox. Security software folks like Symantec have made a great business out of their ability to block and remove this vermin.

I am talking about the large variety of offers, some offering to cure my sexual debilitations they are privy to, others promising to keep me in a diazepam-induced Nirvana for as long as I can pay for it, and still others thoughtfully offering me a chance to share in a rich widow’s inheritance.

Apart from their being a nuisance, there is the chance that somebody may be gullible enough to be inveigled into these deals. There are a large number of reports that confirm that a lot of folks in the US have in fact got into deep trouble trying to share in someone’s loot.

The Internet gives us the most valuable and scary insights into the depths human nature can sink to, when given global access and anonymity. Does this mean that we should shut down the Internet ? No ways, I make my money of it, I download music far faster than if I had waited for the local brick-and-mortar store to stock it, I can research information on the net, I can chat up distant friends on instant messengers, people under repressive regimes can now communicate with the outside world !

The point is that we have to be very, very careful, starting with the realization that it is not a brave new world out there in cyberspace.

The Internet and its promise of Second Life is not the promise of liberation from a cruel terra firma. It is the same sad world we live in, only a lot more unsafe, because the criminals can now get you in the privacy and security of your home. Forewarned, as the old saw goes, is forearmed. Irrational exuberance could have deadly results.

In Pakistan, Osama bin Laden more popular than Musharraf

Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden is more popular in Pakistan than the country’s President Pervez Musharraf, according to Terror Free Tomorrow, a non-profit organization in Washington D.C. focused on finding effective policies that win popular support away from global terrorists and extremism.

The nation-wide survey by the organization also found that former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are far more popular than Musharraf suggesting that the US’s unstinted support for the military dictator may be ill-advised.

When Pakistanis were asked, unprompted, what they think is the real purpose of the U.S.-led war on terror, a mere 4 percent volunteered any kind of positive motivation, according to the report. Remaining responses were all decidedly negative, with “breaking Muslim countries, killing Muslims, ending Islam, etc” among the most common, volunteered responses, the report added.

Yet, despite pervasive negative feelings toward the United States, a majority of Pakistanis said their opinion of the US would improve if American educational, medical, disaster, business investment, and the number of visas for Pakistanis to work in the US increased.

Senator John McCain and former 9/11 Commission Chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton lead the international advisory board of Terror Free Tomorrow.

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A little more tolerance Mr. Stallman !

For those of us who in some way or the other were influenced by the counter-culture, folks like Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation are a nostalgic reminder of what the counter-culture stood for – freedom, choice, be yourself.

Stallman does not fit or try to fit into a squeaky corporate persona. By his very casual dressing, often bordering on the unkempt, and his insistence on software being free (as in freedom to access, modify, and redistribute source code, and not just free as in “free beer”), Stallman is the best example of the counter-culture in software development.

Which is all nice, and interesting. But problems begin when folks like Stallman and his followers take the moral high ground, and demonize everyone else, including the folks in the open-source camp. “If you don't want to lose your freedom, you had better not follow (Linus Torvalds),” Stallman said in an interview published in Computerworld

Freedom in any society, including an open society is continuously fought for, and earned through compromises and adjustments with the freedom of other people, including those who would like to develop proprietary software. You may want to call the folks in the proprietary camp profiteers, misguided, but not by a long stretch unethical. This intolerance of other views has perhaps made Stallman and the FSF lose ground to more popular open-source.

You may disagree with the direction the open-source movement is taking. These days one hears from the open-source community less about freedom, and more about how open-source development is the most efficient, economical, and flexible model for software development, as it taps into the innovation of a large number of software developers. The justification for open-source is increasingly becoming one of economic efficiency than of freedom.

There are a lot of factors that have influenced this change – a key one being the adoption of open source by the corporate sector. If Eric S. Raymond said many years ago that “every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch”, today a lot of open-source software development is directed by a corporate agenda, a corporate itch. On the flip side, there are far more developers on company roles doing open-source development, which has increased the sheer volume of open source software available.

There are also a lot of companies that swear entirely by open source, while some others put into open source only some parts of their software, where they can benefit from the efficiencies of the model.

Different interests have taken a different view of open-source, and not a lot of them are purists in the Stallman mode. I admire Stallman’s concern about freedom, but in all spheres of society freedom comes through a “give-and-take”. I admire Stallman for standing his ground, but I can’t agree with him demonizing others for not standing on the ground he chooses. That borders on the fascist, and is anathema to any freedom.

Minister, leave the kids alone !

The decision by the government in the state of Karnataka in India to ban mobile phones, for school kids under 16, is quite thoughtless. As Bangalore, the capital city of Karnataka and a technology hub, gets increasingly unsafe, as traffic gets unpredictable, and traffic jams are frequent, it is both reassuring and necessary for kids to be able to communicate with their parents.

A parent I know in Bangalore was quite distressed that in future she would not be able to communicate with her kid while in school. She told me she has found a work-around. "If they will not let my kid buy a phone, then maybe I will take an additional connection in my name, and give it to the kid," she said.

If the government is concerned about mobile phone users disturbing the class, and quite rightly so, this is a matter for the discipline committees in each school to handle. Blanket bans don't help, and only reflect the schools' inability to handle discipline.

Getting kids to reduce their use of mobile phones to only emergency calls, to avoid the suspected harmful effects of mobile phones, would be a matter to be handled jointly by parents, teachers, and kids.

We are seeing a similar dispute over the use of mobile phones in schools in New York, according to a report in the New York Times

The people of Bangalore would at this point be better served if the police enforce existing rules such as banning drivers from using mobile phones.

The government should also consider clamping down on pedestrians who negotiate the roads while distractedly talking into their mobile phones. The need to be "connected" seems to be so strong among people in Bangalore, that often folks plug on their headsets and start talking just as they are leaving home. Often car drivers honk at jay walking pedestrian, but the pedestrian cannot hear over the mobile conversation, or is too engrossed in the conversation.

Keyloggers in Indian cyber cafés scare liberals

Police in Mumbai, India will soon make it compulsory for cyber cafes to have keyloggers installed that will enable the capture of user activity on public computers at cyber cafes, according to a report from a Mumbai paper.

The move will help police keep a track on terrorists who are increasingly using modern technology to communicate, the report said.

Not unexpectedly, individual rights groups have expressed opposition to the move, saying it will breach privacy, according to Ars Technica

For a country that has seen a large number of terrorist attacks, protecting privacy is a small concern for people when compared to protecting their lives.

People in the country do not also transact a lot online, so fears of theft of credit card or bank information are quite exaggerated.

Mumbai itself has been the victim recently of bomb blasts on trains that killed people by the hundreds. In Hyderabad in south India, terrorist bombs killed a large number of people, including children.

It is also pretty well-documented that terrorists have used mobile phones and the Internet for their violent objectives. Public cyber cafes have provided terrorists the anonymity that a private Internet connection does not. Indian rules do allow police interception of both telephony and Internet communications in the interest of national security. The police have previously tried getting cyber cafes to ask for identity cards from users, but that hasn’t really worked out.

By opposing keylogging that could save lives, left liberals have their priorities misplaced. Reminds me of animal welfare organizations, who oppose killing of stray dogs in Indian cities, even as these dogs have been repeatedly responsible for maiming and killing children.

Honest people don’t have to worry about interception, as long as there are safeguards against misuse of private data. Civil society has to work to make sure that private data collected is not misused. That is where privacy rights organizations and all of us have a role to play.

Also by keylogging cyber cafes in Mumbai alone, the police may force terrorists to move to Mumbai’s suburbs or other cities. The measure will have to be countrywide.

Six years after 9/11, whistling in the dark

When you are alone in a dark alley, you whistle a happy tune, because you don’t want a potential attacker to know you are scared.

Frances Fragos Townsend, President George Bush’s homeland security adviser, whistled just a tune like that when she declared to TV channels like the CNN that Osama bin Laden was “virtually impotent”.

These kind of statements maybe sound good in the run up to the US presidential election, and reassure some people. It is true that the US has not suffered any major attacks in recent years. But it would be a big mistake to get complacent, and even arrogant about it.

Let us not overlook that only recently the UK was under attack by doctors in cars packed with explosives. That the terrorist plan didn’t pan out had very little to do with anti-terrorism measures, and more with the fact that the doctors goofed in their violent mission.

More recently terrorist suspects were arrested in Germany – their targets said to be Frankfurt airport and US installations in Germany. And in India, Islamic terrorists killed large number of people in bomb blasts in Hyderabad.

There is hence no room for smugness ! Bin Laden and Al Qaeda continue to be dangerous, and the armies of the US and its allies have failed to bring him in.

The rub of the matter is that the world has changed dramatically since 9/11. Nobody is secure anymore, any where in the world.

Europe learnt it during the menace of the leftist Baader Meinhof gang, that nobody was safe even if a single oddball was at large. The Baader Meinhof gang was a small operation, that wore out by attrition, killings, and peelers.

But the Islamic jihad draws its number from thousands of people who have a solid enough grievance to go out and kill, even if they are themselves killed in the bargain.

As long as America and its allies, and we as civil society, don’t address these grievances, there will always be some jihadis willing to take a shot. With the Internet, the instruments of violence can be cooked up in a garage or kitchen.

These days as I go to work, or am in public places, I am terribly scared. Death, at the hands of an anonymous terrorist, who only cares for you as a statistic in the death toll the next day in the newspapers, lurks everywhere.

I refuse to join Townsend in whistling in the dark about Bin Laden’s or Al Qaeda’s impotence.

The only impotence I see today is American – a super-power paralyzed, yet blundering into more corners by its thoughtless arrogance. I also see a ham fisted attempt to cover it up by clinging to tenuous victories.

Nawaz Sharif deported to Saudi Arabia

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been deported once again to Saudi Arabia, according to reports, suggesting that General Musharraf and the military running the country is not ready to move towards democracy in the country.

It appears the current government will not concede to democratic parties unless there are certain guarantees that the general and the military can perpetuate their control.

A problem with Pakistan since its independence has been the political role of the military. Sharif has talked about getting the military out of politics, though for a while he was set up by the military against Benazir Bhutto.

It is unlikely that the US will intervene in favor of the democratic parties, as in its war against terror, it finds Musharraf and the military more supine at this point. The US is likely to renew efforts to broker an agreement between Musharraf and Bhutto that will ensure the continuation of Musharraf as President.

The moves by Sharif, including his arrest and deportation at the Islamabad airport, are expected to boost his image domestically among the growing number of Musharraf detractors. His political objectives would have been partially met to that extent.
Bhutto in contrast may have lost face for her attampts to parley with Musharraf.

Bangalore: paying the price of economic boom ?

Bangalore, India’s software and call center outsourcing hub, is slowly emerging as a marketer's dream, with its whole lot of atomized and bored people. Offer them the malls and they rush there hoping for companionship and excitement that small communities once offered.

Why is the city becoming atomized ? Analysts in the city say that it has got to do with ever-shifting neighborhoods. The neighborhoods are changing - once upon a time they were stable communities of people who knew each other very well from birth through puberty through adulthood and old age. Neighbors once gossiped about one another, but they cared to gossip ! Conversation was possible because there was a common history, common issues, and everyone knew each other very well.

Now a neighbor can be a call center worker whose timings are not the same as yours. “If he disappears and the cops come asking, I can't say a lot about him...because all I got from him in the last six months was a sleepy "Hi", and yes he once told me was moving jobs to another city,” said Shankar, a long-standing resident of the city, about his neighbor.

The police are more likely to come asking about neighbors these days because the crime rate is going higher with muggings, rapes, suicides on the rise -- a by product of stressful lives, migratory populations, and resentment over a yawning economic divide, according to the pundits.

“The folks on the other side where I live are IT professionals,” said Shankar. “They have been around for one-year, and they are leaving for the US in the next six months. We have promised to write to each other.”

Just across from Shankar’s home are two gated apartments – a new phenomenon in Bangalore, patronized and affordable only by the very rich among the city’s software professionals and corporate executives. “I can only tell them from their lovely cars that zip in and out,” he said.

“I used to like to go and chat with some old friends over "chai" (tea), but we gave up because we couldn't make it because of different working hours, and some of them travel a lot,” said R. Ganesh, another second-generation resident of the city. When Ganesh had the time, he couldn't get parking even two kilometers from the teashop.

As Bangalore gets more affluent as a result of the boom in outsourcing to the city the number of cars, including expensive foreign cars, has gone up, even as the local government continues to neglect the roads and other infrastructure. A construction boom has also cut into public spaces.

“So now we use the technology wonder called "chat" on Instant Messenger. We :)) instead of actually smiling. I haven't figured out yet how one does a back-slap on IM, or a tight hug for a very good friend,” Ganesh said.

Enter the marketing guys who no longer offer only products, but whole experiences and a life style around them. “The new mantra is why are you being old-fashioned, clinging to that old tea shop which will get brought down anyways to give way to a sky rise building in glass, concrete, and steel ? Go instead for a wild-life safari, or join the golf club, or go to the swanky malls that have come up !,” said Ganesh.

Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad

The commercial plane carrying former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif landed in Islamabad a while ago, paving the way for a long confrontation between the exiled politician and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

It is not yet clear however whether Sharif will be detained, deported, or allowed to enter Pakistan unhindered by its military rulers.

Nawaz Sharif was ousted by Musharraf in a coup in 1999, and after some months in jail in Pakistan, struck a deal to leave Pakistan and go into exile in Saudi Arabia. The Pakistan government says that deal required him to stay away from Pakistan for 10 years, while Sharif said the period was five years.

The Pakistan Supreme Court however recently ruled that there was no impediment to Sharif returning to Pakistan. He had the right to return to the country, and the government could not come in his way, the court said.

As Sharif boarded a commercial airline Sunday to go back to Pakistan, with the stated aim of restoring democracy in Pakistan, Musharraf's options appeared limited, and would in any case end in wide-scale civil unrest.

Reports had the President arresting him on arrival, or his being deported back to Saudi Arabia. The authorities in Saudi Arabia said Sunday that they would provide Shariff shelter if he was deported from Pakistan. If Sharif were allowed into Pakistan, without restrictions, he and his supporters were likely to demand the ouster of Musharraf, the reports said.

Musharraf is preparing to try to secure another term in a presidential election by the national and provincial assemblies some time between September 15 and October 15.

A number of Sharif's supporters were arrested over the weekend, indicating that Musharraf was planning to take a tough line on Sharif.

Musharraf is often described by the US as a friend and ally in the war against terror. Osama bin Laden and other key jihadis are said to be in hiding in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

US policy in Pakistan hypocritical

The US has often sworn by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf as a friend in the war against terror. Now they are backing him to the hilt as he faces civilian unrest within the country, trying to contrive a deal between the General and a former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, that would keep the General in power.

Meanwhile the General attempts to block the return to Pakistan of another Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who it appears will not play ball with either the Americans or the President.

Where does this place US President George Bush’s aim to promote democracy around the world ? Pakistan, a virtual client state of the US, would be evidently the first place to start.

The rub is that the US, we are told, is more comfortable with the President than Pakistan’s democrats in the fight against terror. The importance of having a stable, and Musharraf-run Pakistan is underscored by Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons, which the Americans fear could fall in terrorist hands if the Islamic jihadis over-run Pakistan.

This argument however overlooks conveniently that neither Bhutto or Sharif are Islamic extremists. The opposition to Musharaff in Pakistan is moderate. The continuation of an unpopular Musharraf government, with US support, will only strengthen extremist elements in the country.

Historically, the US has stood solidly behind Pakistani and its dictators, viewing the country as a gateway to the Middle East, even if it meant antagonizing a large democracy like India. That is the reason why former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi signed very wisely a treaty in the 1970s with the former Soviet Union. That is also the reason why India’s Leftist parties, and to an extent the scientific establishment, are wary of signing a nuclear deal with the US, that would give India access to American nuclear technology under certain conditions.

Indian’s don’t trust the Americans, and talk of the need for indigenous technology, because they have been the victims of American hypocrisy for decades.

It is now time for Bush, for all his posturing as the great champion of democracy, to set the record straight in South Asia, both within Pakistan, and in its relations with India.

To be sure, the US will say that Sharif and his family faces criminal charges in Pakistan. But Bush cannot be so naïve as to imagine that these charges are for real. Dictators are known to trump up charges, and try to compromise the judiciary, sometimes with a wink-and-a-nod from the US. Bush can’t have forgotten Musharaff’s botched attempt to get rid of the country's Supreme Court chief justice in March.

Osama Bin Laden's seductive new avatar

Until recently the public pronouncements by Al Qaeda have primarily consisted of frothing-at-the-mouth threats against the American “infidels” and “dogs”.

In a video this week, transcripts of which are available from various sources, including MSNBC, Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden attempts to flesh out a political ideology, a justification for Al Qaeda’s brand of terrorism.

Democratic governments are controlled by the money bags of corporations, which is why, argues Laden, John F. Kennedy was killed when he was trying to get the US to pull out of Vietnam:


--- And you’re the ones who have the saying which goes, “Money Talks.”And I tell you: after the failure of your representatives in the Democratic Party to implement your desire to stop the war, you can still carry anti-war placards and spread out in the streets of major cities, then go back to your homes, but that will be of no use and will lead to the prolonging of the war ----


Laden also makes common cause with environmentalists


------ mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations, yet despite that, the representative of these corporation in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord --------


And appeals to Christians to convert to Islam, attempting to point similarities between the two faiths.


In his new avatar, Laden did not directly threaten the American people, instead focusing on convincing his listeners that they and the Muslims were on the same side, all victims of the capitalist system.

---- as soon as the warmongering owners of the major corporation realize that you have lost confidence in your democratic system and begun to search for an alternative, and that this alternative is Islam, they will run after you to please you and achieve what you want to steer you away from Islam -----


To my mind, this avatar of Laden could be far more seductive to the young and impressionable in the West and other parts of the world. Laden’s new view of the world combines religious fundamentalism, with hot issues like anti-globalization and environmental concerns.

OLPC may run on Intel chips

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project said it welcomes Intel Corp. and other microprocessor companies to design silicon for this low-cost laptop designed for school children, and Intel is already designing a motherboard for the laptop, according to a report Friday in InfoWorld.

The first version of the OLPC laptop is powered by Geode chips from Intel's rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).

Intel has its own design, the Classmate PC, which is a PC also specially designed for schools. It signed up PC makers in India to assemble and sell the product in July, with plans to introduce the product in Nigeria, and Brazil. At $450 Intel’s Classmate is costlier than the XO from the OLPC project, which costs about $175. Intel however says Classmate comes with a lot of security, collaboration, and control features for teachers in a classroom, which are not found in XO.

A white Jihadi !!

The arrest in Germany of two white terror suspects this week has demolished stereotypes of jihadi terrorists.

Until now the Jihadi was perceived as a person of West Asian or South Asian extract, fanatically religious, and unable to separate politics from religion.

Now it is that boy next door ! As if the number of west Asian and south Asian immigrants were not a large enough threat, it is the boy next door turning against Western civilization.

What makes a youngster, in the prime of life, strap bombs to his body, head to a crowded place, and blow himself and others around ? Until now this was an almost academic question about some people across the borders, or in some ghetto. Now it could be a question about a youth at home or in the neighborhood.

Rather than ask these questions, Germany is not unexpectedly slipping into knee jerk reflexes like exploring the option of monitoring the activities of German converts to Islam. See this report in Spiegel

It is becoming more clearer that unlike in conventional warfare, the “war against terror” will not be won by a large defense arsenal. Those were to an extent useful against organized terrorist militias in the Middle East like the Taliban, but they are increasingly less so when the new face of terrorism is increasingly an ordinary civilian in your neighborhood – most often a migrant, but sometimes that blond boy across the road..

Our weapons may be superior to that of the terrorist, but pray tell me where do you find him first ? He may be in our neighborhood, in our community. He may even be at the same place of work. And he will show his or her hand at a time suitable, typically when our guard is down.

We could get ham fisted, and back our government to search, intimidate, and harass communities which are suspected to breed terrorists . In the past our governments dropped some bombs hoping to kill terrorists, but also killed a lot of civilians in the bargain, as the Americans did recently in Afghanistan, hoping to kill some of the Taliban in a village. But you can’t do that on native soil.

If we harass and kill a lot of people in trying to catch a terrorist, we are doing a part of his work for him by alienating large parts of the community. If our laws become more draconian, we are again doing his work for him. Most terrorists have always believed that democracy is a sham that conceals an iron, dictatorial hand.

The American decision to house prisoners, suspected to be terrorists, in Guantánamo Bay, without access to the provisions of the Geneva Convention, did not cover America with glory. The fig-leaf of a pretext that Guantánamo was not American territory, and therefore the prisoners were not under the jurisdiction of US law, once again showed that we can expediently abandon democratic principles. Now Germany seems to be veering towards a surveillance policy that could seriously curb personal freedom.

It helps to have an army or police in the background to protect people, repeat to protect people if there is an attack. But soldiers and police armed to the teeth cannot be your diplomats, the carriers of your message of reconciliation.

Politicians and concerned people have to start communicating with suspects and those on the fence, break down the barriers, get around their fears and anxiety. The old ploy of identifying a “bogey-man” and attacking him may bring votes, but will not save lives.

Let us not try to change their way of life, their culture, because that is exactly what they suspect is our hidden agenda. When some of us talk, as does President George Bush, of exporting democracy to countries known to have large terror groups, we may in fact be insulting their way of life. It comes across as patronizing as some colonialists of yore who wanted to bring the colonized in Asia and Africa our of their “backward” living and beliefs into a more European and Christian way of life.

The NGOs should move in with aid, rather than prescriptions. The American people, the Indian people, the Russians, the British people, and all others who have been affected by the threat of terrorism should reach out to these people, talk to them about helping them, talk to them about restoring their dignity, their lives. This is not a job for governments, or the military, but for civil society.

The terrorist is in our midst. That brings up the opportunity for civil society to win them over on mutual terms. It is also a time to look within – what about US and European politics and culture, for example, are driving its young to other religions and culture ?

At the same time civil society cannot harbor the illusions that this will be an easy process. There will always be the more determined terrorists, planning a bomb attack, even while you are talking peace with them. While communicating with terrorists as people, civil society has to also communicate with one another, to keep a discreet eye on unusual activity, unusual objects lying around in our neighborhoods, unusual people.

Toxic Chinese toys in India too

India’s health ministry has said that several Chinese toys being sold in the local market are highly toxic as they contain high levels of heavy metals such as cadmium and lead, and were, therefore, harmful to children, according to a report in Indian daily, The Times of India.

The country’s toy market is dominated by branded products by Mattel and other international vendors, and a large number of toys made by Chinese companies. The Indian middle class and lower middle class overwhelmingly patronize Chinese toys that are cheaper.

In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, the country’s upper house of Parliament, the minister said that "according to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), NGO Toxics Link had conducted a study in 2006 which examined toys from Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, and reported high levels of cadmium and lead in PVC used in soft toys."

The minister said that most of the toys in Chennai and Mumbai were being imported from China. Lead is a known neuro and hamatological toxin which can lead to delayed development and lower IQ in children, the Times of India reported.

The Bureau of Indian Standards has published three standards regarding safety of toys, according to the minister. But these are only voluntary, according to TV channel IBN Live

India has been slow in introducing legislation relating to environment and toxicity issues such as e-waste management. Its gargantuan bureaucracy and corruption at all levels of government ensure that even if there is legislation, monitoring adherence will be lukewarm.

At traffic stops in some of the key cities in the country, hawkers flagrantly sell toys and other goods of Chinese origin. Toy shops in the country also sell a large number of toys said to be of Chinese origin.

Wikipedia blocked again in China

Wikipedia's English site has been again blocked in China, in an ongoing saga which has seen this site frequently blocked by the Chinese government.

Read here Wikipedia's account of the frequent blocks of its site in the country.

The Chinese government frequently blocks sites with information that the regime considers controversial, such as the Falun Gong religious cult and independence for Taiwan and Tibet, according to a report by the IDG News Service in ComputerworldUK. The current blocking may be related to the upcoming Communist Party Congress, which begins Oct. 15 in Beijing, IDG said Thursday.

Wikipedia holds that its site has been blocked since Aug 31, though IDG quotes users saying that the latest block fell into place this week.

While Wikipedia's English site is occasionally available, its Chinese-language sites are almost permanently blocked, IDG News Service added.

The online community developed encylopedia has been suffering both from censorship by governments, and by attempts by companies and people to embellish references to them in Wikipedia. Its credibility was challenged by recent disclosures that the site has been frequently edited by self-serving interests including companies modifying write-ups on themselves.

Getting listed on Wikipedia has emerged as a new sign of having arrived in your field. The provision for easy addition of entries has ensured that a number of people have created write-ups on friends and family. Very often these folks would not figure by a stretch on an administered encylopedia like the Brittanica. Wikipedia, of course, holds that its technology allows others to make changes and add to Wikipedia content, a provision that is part of its community focus, which is at times misused.

Mattel toy recall: a case for banning imports of Chinese toys ?

Once upon a time, not so long ago, toys for kids were handcrafted, and made of wood. The seven dwarfs, the fairies, elves, and other denizens of a child’s universe, were just what one would expect them to look - small and cute, with an eye to detail, and lots of realism.

Enter Fisher-Price, Mattel, and other toy companies, and they began producing in plastic, and to cut costs and appeal to mass markets, they did the inevitable – move production to Asia, mainly China.

As a result quality dropped, not only because of the Chinese, but because of the cost cutting, I guess. The Barbie dolls, owned by my daughter, broke in weeks, and soon she found greater interest in cuddly rag dolls and stuffed toys, rather than in big-breasted Barbie dolls.

The toy companies that handcrafted their toys with high quality materials were however priced out of the market. Some of them thrived in niches, designing products for the super-rich.

In the meantime, the Chinese got into their own toy design and manufacture of toys, and flooded markets around the world with low-cost, easily broken toys of questionable aesthetics. Their prices were right though, and as a result by some estimates 80 percent of toys imported to the US are from China. It is likely to be far higher in developing economies like India.

Mattel is likely to in time get its quality checks back in place, and put the embarrassment of the repeated recalls of its products, behind it. Let me point out here that bad products and recalls not only hurt company bottom lines, but a lot of kids who have already handled these unsafe gizmos.

What is worse is that the vast majority of Chinese toys entering our markets do not however go through any internationally approved quality standards. They come from companies that are hardly known outside China.

Has anyone studied those toys extensively for lead in the paint, and other threats to children ? Is there a case for governments around the world to ban these toys before they hurt kids ? Does it make sense, at this point to protect domestic industries in various countries that have been so far producing wholesome toys, but could go extinct because of competition from China ? This is not protectionism. This is for our children.

Back to the new Mattel and Fisher-Price recall this week. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced this week that:

1)Mattel Recalls Various Barbie Accessory Toys Due to Violation of Lead
Paint Standard
2)Fisher-Price Recalls Geo Trax Locomotive Toys Due To Violation of
Lead Paint Standard
3)Fisher-Price Recalls Bongo Band Toys Due to Violation of Lead Paint
Standard

The recall involves various Barbie accessory toys that were manufactured between September 30, 2006 and August 20, 2007. The model names, product numbers and affected date code numbers are listed in a chart on CPSC's web site.

The recall by Fisher-Price involves the Geo Trax Freightway Transport and Geo Trax Special Track Pack locomotive toys. These toys are red with yellow paint on the ladder and horn details, CPSC said in a release. The recalled models were manufactured between July 31, 2006 and August 20, 2007 and have a date code between 212-6CK through 325-6CK or 001-7CK through 232-7CK marked on the bottom of the product. The packaging on the Freightway Transport model is marked H5705 and the packaging on the Special Track Pack model is marked K3013, CPSC said.

Pavarotti : Passing away of a musical giant

Luciano Pavarotti, one of the leading opera tenors, passed away earlier today. The singer fought a long battle against pancreatic cancer.

Pavarotti was a legend in our time, comparable to Enrico Caruso for another generation. Many of us who grew in the 1960s to the beat of the Beatles and hip-hop, spurned classical music, and with it Pavarotti, as being irrelevant to our times.

As our hairline receded and graying set in, the hip-hop was still interesting, but many of us turned to classical music, where Pavarotti ruled as a singer and Karajan as a director until his death, for the evergreen themes of life, the eternal truths.

I have only heard about Pavarotti, and had to fall back on CDs for his music, enthralled by his singing, particularly the arias from Verdi, and Puccini’s La Boheme and Nessum Dorma. But his death still feels personal, almost like the passing of an age in classical music.

Pavarotti made his overtures, or shall we say concessions to the new beats of this generation, including through joint performances with U2 and Vanessa Williams.

iPod and the end of conversation

I am walking down a busy street, when I hear someone say “you jerk are coming in my way”. I turn around ready to do battle, only to be terribly disappointed to find that this lone man is busy talking on his mobile phone. I enter the local MacDonald’s and there is a couple with three kids. The man and his wife each engrossed in conversation, not with each other, but on their mobile phones.

Funny we talk so much to folks at a distance, without a word for those around us.

Can’t blame folks for this. There is so much you can do with your handheld devices that you have to prioritize your time. Do I plug in my earphones to hear music or a an audio download, or listen to the wife whining endlessly about household problems. Or do I pick up the BlackBerry and catch up with my email, or do I call up a friend about the car he wanted to sell, or the latest videos in the mall, or…….

The options are limitless. And Apple Computer Inc. just added to those possibilities of cutting out socializing by adding video games to its new line of iPod Nano devices. The new Nano, available in five colors, features a 2.5-inch, or 6.4-centimeter, screen for watching movies and playing games like a Sudoko program developed by Electronic Arts, said the International Herald Tribune in a report on Wednesday.

Can’t blame Apple for putting out attractive new products in the market. It is not the job of companies to worry about your wife and children and friends getting cut out of your new electronic life. The popular wisdom is that they have to be driven by the profit motive, even if that means us walking around wired with a variety of gadgets exchanging information with one another and with gadgets around the world on wireless technologies like Wi-Fi or cellular.

Time to tame the beast ? You will have to find the answer. I have got to run and watch this super movie I downloaded on my Nano, after I have grabbed it from my four-year old daughter. Get off the BlackBerry son, I am expecting a call !

Mother Teresa more human, more heroic

Mother Teresa was always a mystery to me - she was too perfect. Do you remember the times you tried to pick holes in her. You saw some of her remarks, like “a family that prays together, stays together”, as too facile, too doctrinaire.

Recent revelations that the Mother went through a dark period, a lapse of faith perhaps, make her only too human and likeable. To tend to the lepers, poor, and other people on the margin in the slums of Calcutta is a fire test for any believer.

It is saintly for a Catholic to follow Christ’s example and attend selflessly to those on the margin. That Mother Teresa continued with her mission, despite the challenges to her faith, is heroic, to say the least.

Instant Happiness

Fie those who don’t change with the times; who will cling to their youthful dreams and precepts, who still worry about the meaning of life, about the disappearance of the decent and civil in human society, about ennui, about……..

For change is upon you, a change begotten, we are told, by the magic of capitalism and materialism. Too long has your soul, your real soul, been starved of experiences that matter, of personal music on an iPOD, of instant access to people and things the world over, of jungle trips in five-star luxury, of the opportunity to travel the world in safety and luxury organized by your travel agency.

So drop your antiquated dreams that served you badly, only generating anxiety and an existential angst, drop those authors like Sartre, Camus, Marx, or Heidegger. They have had their time. They never changed the world. It was capitalism that changed the world. It was capitalism that made jeans – that symbol of counter-culture protest in the 1950s and 1960s – an expensive perk of corporate success. So what if they changed the meaning of the jeans from a counter-culture protest to a more manageable and colorless symbol of something casual to wear with your Nike shoes ?

Let your hair down and enjoy the fruits of the revolution laid out for you by Madison Avenue. You are no longer into buying goods but experiences, and life styles. If your existential concerns still nag you, you could take a shot at instant spirituality. You don’t have to leave your job, or forego your expensive car, and it is exotic. And by the way, your heart need not bleed for the poor, to go to heaven. That was a Marxist hangover, in fact a proof that Marxism never outgrew its Judaic Christian messianic roots.