In a swooping country wide move, the HRD ministry has removed the directors of 11 NITs (previously named RECs) across the country citing an irregular process of appointment by the previous government. The present HRD ministry under Mr. Arjun Singh calls this a detoxification drive against the misdeeds of the previous government whose HRD ministry was led by Mr. Murli Manohar Joshi.
I have frequently felt moments of disorientation when certain characters of TV (mostly Americans) pronounce o-f-t-e-n with a audible ’t’. Digging around a bit, I found an interesting bit of trivia at dictionary.com.
During the 15th century English experienced a widespread loss of certain consonant sounds within consonant clusters, as the (d) in handsome and handkerchief, the (p) in consumption and raspberry, and the (t) in chestnut and often. In this way the consonant clusters were simplified and made easier to articulate. With the rise of public education and literacy and, consequently, people’s awareness of spelling in the 19th century, sounds that had become silent sometimes were restored, as is the case with the t in often, which is now frequently pronounced. In other similar words, such as soften and listen, the t generally remains silent.
A Bengali restaurant in New York experimented with a new concept - pay-as-you-like. You eat, and then you pay as much as you think that the food is worth. After causing serious conscience-related trauma in patrons, they finally had to put prices in the menu.
Link to article.
I credit Isaac Asimov for my long-time fascination with the genre of
science-fiction. Asimov (mostly) and Arthur C. Clarke were
mostly what I read at the end of my school days. I was browsing through
Wikipedia today and caught a recent feature by them on Asimov. The
wikipedia entry on Asimov was fascinating - there were so many facts
about him that I didn’t know. So I decided to create a short self-reference of
facts that I would like to remember of this great man. So here is my list of 20
facts about Asimov, the content of which was shamelessly picked out of
Wikipedia. I consider this as my “ode” to The Man.
First they made sure that medicines cost the earth. Then they made sure that you need insurance before you can get health benefits. Then they made sure that you are completely surrounded - rocket high medical bills and insurance not enough to cover it. And now they are making sure that when you get bankrupted, it is impossible to get bankruptcy protection. Hmm .. social security?
U.S. senators are about to pass a bankruptcy bill so hostile to ordinary American families that it
could only have come about in a place as corrupt, cynical and unmoored from reality as Washington,
D.C.
Some months back, the lug-delhi.orgHallOfShame was written about in an article at Techtree. The article also features a short tele-interview that I had with the author.
I have, for the time being, suspended any additions by me to the hallofshame list. I have some plans for the future for this drive which I intend to pursue shortly.
Since my bad experience with Sify, I have been looking around for other similar complaints against Sify. It turns out that they have been running a country-wide racket.
Ankur Raheja has filed a case against Sify broadband for losses due to downtime and misleading claims in their advertisements. Take a look at the comments on that page - Chandigarh, Chennai, Bangalore… every city has a problem with Sify. (Thanks to Puneet for the link)
Sify Broadband CTOs are freaking liars : Sushub talks of his Sify broadband experiences which are identical to mine with both Sofy broadband and Hotwire Internet.
Here is the letter I sent to Sify contact points in Delhi yesterday. It chronicles my Sify broadband experience here in Delhi.
From: Sandip Bhattacharya <sandip AT lug-delhi.org>
To: Sanjay Bhandari <sanjay_bhandari @sifycorp.com>
, Puneet Sharma <puneet_sharma @sifycorp.com>
, anamika <bbcoordinator_delhi @sifycorp.com>
Cc: India Gii <india-gii AT cpsr.org>
Subject: Official complaint - My sify experience and a request for refund
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 14:21:23 +0530
Mailer: Evolution 2.0.2 (2.0.2-3)
I had applied for a sify connection exactly a week ago, and paid a
cheque on the same day. I got this connection via your franchisee
Indraprastha Infotech at IP Extention (Patparganj), Delhi.
It first took me scores of calls to them for convincing them to actually
install at my premises. They happen to have a base station in the same
apartment, and adding my line actually took them about one hour. But it
still took them four days to come over and set up my connection(the
person who collected the cheque promised to do it in two days).
During installation at my residence, the service people saw that there
were losses in the line. However they went back saying that the problem
was elsewhere and promising that the problem would get solved soon.
It took another round of repeated calls to Indraprastha to provide me
with my login id. I logged in to my account that night and saw my
balance to be Rs. 885 (as compared to the Rs. 995 I paid for advance
monthly rental, but that is a separate story).
Since this Monday, I have probably been online only about 20-30 minutes.
The network gateway has continuously been inaccessible to me.
I have been calling your reseller several times every day. Either he
gives me some white lie about sending some people over to my place, or
he simply keeps his phone switched off (especially after 6pm).
The non-MTNL customer care number on your broadband web page, doesnt
work ("number does not exist"). I had changed my network card the day
before yesterday. After that, when for a moment, the gateway became
accessible and I tried to login, I was given the message that my
"computer ID" has changed. There was a phone number in the error
message. Thankfully, that number worked and I could call up sify
customer care. (Why isnt this number on the website?)
I was told by the customer care executive that you implement mac
binding, and the executive reset my mac address. I could log in, but
while I was talking to the person, the gateway again became
inaccessible. Since then I have made repeated calls to sify customer
care, and they have promised to send somebody to see to my problem but
nothing has happened yet.
Your franchise is still inaccessible. When I visited their office
sometime back, none of their internet related personnel were present.
They run a cable tv network too, and these people asked me to come
sometime later. Even if I call them now, they either put me on hold (and
manually disconnect me after 5 minutes) or they keep the phone switched
off.
Now my situation is this: I had an existing cable internet connection
before sify (hotwire) that I planned to give up after moving to sify.
But considering what is happening, and considering my feeling that sify
is totally unsuitable and unreliable for my needs, I still need to hang
on to that connection.
So this month,
1. I have already paid sify for setting up my connection Rs. 1300.
2. I have paid sify for a full months rental in advance Rs. 995.
3. I will be paying hotwire their monthly rental Rs. 880.
The local hotwire reseller has the sweet habit of switching off the
network whenever he runs out of power backup or there is a chance of a
thunderstorm (to prevent his equipment getting damaged from electrical
problems). So in these cases, I have to switch to dialup. My last
month's dialup internet charges was Rs. 650. (I see some clouds outside
today :( )
So thanks to sify I would be spending Rs. 3825 this month for an always-
off "broadband" and an actually dialup connection.
I have had enough of Sify. I have yet to see a trace of professionalism
and reliability in its offerings. I would request you to refund my money
and disconnect my connection, so that my losses are minimized.
Thank you,
Sandip Bhattacharya
P.S. I am also sending this mail to a prominent all india telecom
mailing list so that the members there are also sensitized about how
Sify actually works in practice.
Update June 26 2005: Since the posting of this entry, I have been called up by somebody from Sify after about 2-3 months of the above incident happening. The Sify rep had called up to say that the networking problems have been fixed and I can resume my connection again(after 2+months!). This is apart from the calls I kept getting from them every month reminding me to renew my connection! Oh yes, before I forget, none of the people I had mailed the above ever reverted back. Of course, none of us are surprised, right?
Inspite of my contempt for their loathsome Internet fleecing plans, I had to reluctantly sign up for a Sify cable internet plan today. Cost me a neat pile for installation and pre-payment for one month. The most painful part of this transition is going back to a NAT-ted private IP. This means no more gnomemeeting, no more yahoo voice/video chat, no more Bittorrent, no more gnutella/fasttrack/openft and other P2P networks, no more logging into my home machine when stranded outside my home office to retrieve a document I left at home. (sob) :(
It was my parents anniversary yesterday. We had cake and flowers and candles. Uploaded pics for the day to my Flickr
account. The pictures are collected into a set
here.
I am loving Flickr. Having a hosted services for storing my photos is the best thing that has
happened for a while. No more running to upgrade the gallery software whenever a patch is out. Flickr allows me to store
the high resolution photos itself, something that can easily cause your own web site to get out of hand in a short
while. Also, it saves on loads of bandwidth.