Disclaimer

Please take a look at the bottom of this page for the author's disclaimer and note of caution.

Saturday 31 July, 2010

Words for Thought!

Words for Thought!

The sun does not rise - and the clouds do not rain - so that the plants will grow, but their being there is invaluable to the growth that certainly happens.

Do give a thought to all the teachers that you've ever had. Especially those who were and / or

  • living with you at home (in the guise of a parent, spouse, sibling, child)
  • supposedly studying with you at school, college, etc.
  • your colleagues at work

You'll be surprised at the kind of and quantum of stuff that you have learnt merely because of their being what they are / were!

Regards,

N


Sunday 18 July, 2010

Indian Parliament Canteen's Menu Card

 

Indian Parliament Canteen's Menu Card

I got this mail from a friend.

And I hope that the contents are false.

Sadly, I'm afraid, the contents are pretty much likely to be factual.

And, our politicians, across all parties, claim to represent lesser mortals like you and me.

Regards,

N

Parliament Canteen's Menu Card

Can you imagine a vegetarian thali lunch for Rs.12.50 or a katori (small bowl) of dal at Rs.1.50, and chapatis for a rupee each at a time when the prices of essential commodities are touching the sky?

Yes it is possible, even if food is getting out of the reach of the poor in the country. Welcome to the Parliament House canteen - where delectable dishes will never act pricey.

A series of catering units run by Indian Railways at Parliament House, including at the library and the annexe building, serve food at rates which are a good decade old but are hard to digest for a newcomer.

MPs, who are seen shouting at each other and castigating the government over the rising food prices, definitely relish the cheap canteen food. But, mind you, the facility is not for them only. Parliament staff, low-paid security personnel and accredited journalists too enjoy the delicacies at rates which an ordinary citizen outside cannot even think of.
Dal, considered to be the poor man's food in India and which is now getting too expensive to even fit his bowl, costs just Rs.1.50 for a katori.

Low rates make the desserts sweeter. A katori of kheer at Rs.5.50 will never taste bitter. So will a small fruit cake at Rs.9.50 and a helping of fruit salad at Rs.7.

If you want to have soup, enjoy a bowl full at Rs.5.50, and for a heaped plate of cooked rice you need to shell out just Rs.2. Dosa is available at Rs.4.

And, yes, a cup of piping hot tea is available for just Rs.1 -- not in the canteen but along a parliament corridor at a tea board.

Where does this come from? Remember, behind the cheap commodity there is a subsidy. All this costs the government a huge amount of tax payers' money.

The gap between the actual cost and what MPs, journalists and others have to pay, is bridged with a food budget set aside by parliament.

"Over Rs.5.3 crore has been allocated during the current financial year for the canteens. The Lok Sabha pays some Rs.3.55 crore and the Rajya Sabha shares the amount to over Rs.1.77 crore," said an official.

"Not only MPs, we serve food to everybody who is allowed inside parliament. They also include workers, gardeners and labourers," the official told IANS, defending the low prices.

The food prices were last revised in 2004.

A 15-member joint parliamentary committee on food management headed by then MP K. Yerranaidu of the Telugu Desam Party was constituted in 2005 to consider revision of the rates and the service.

"The committee didn't give any report and the rates were not revised," the official said.

During the just-concluded winter session, on an average "3,000 people were served lunch in the canteen daily", a caterer said, but strongly pleaded anonymity as "we have been told not to speak to the media without permission".

Parliament House Canteen Food Rates

Tea Re. 1

Soup Rs.5.50

Dal - one katori Rs.1.50

Veg thali (dal, subzi,4 chapatis, rice/pulao, curd and salad) Rs.12.50

Non-veg thali Rs.22

Curd rice Rs.11

Veg pulao Rs.8

Chicken biryani Rs.34

Fish curry and rice Rs.13

Rajma rice Rs.7

Tomato rice Rs.7

Fish fry Rs.17

Chicken curry Rs.20.50

Chicken masala Rs.24.50

Butter chicken Rs.27

Chapati Re.1 a piece

One plate rice Rs.2

Dosa Rs.4

Kheer - one katori Rs.5.50

Fruit cake Rs.9.50

Fruit salad Rs.7

Stop fighting with each other friends, its time to stop trusting politicians blindly, they all are enjoying their lives, and the only people suffering are Poor and Aam Aadmi, while the politicians fill themselves up to the brim with this cheap food so that they have sufficient energy to throw slippers and make perfect asses of themselves inside the venerable Parliament.

Just a thought.....There could be Medical Facilities also at subsidised Rates! and the Politicians fight for Aam Admi for Petrol / Diesel subsidy! All politicians savings also go to Swiss Bank account..... and many more subsidies enjoyed.....????? Now we all know where is the poverty line.....

Regards,

N


Tuesday 13 July, 2010

Employers may do creepy web searches about you

Employers may do creepy web searches about you

This one is indeed creepy!

If I were an employer, I'll certainly be interested in knowing about the tools & techniques of deep searches. And if I'm not an employer but am interested in being an employee, I'll be even more interested!

Regards,

N

Employers may do creepy web searches about you

A deep Web search could turn up your Amazon wish lists, whether your house is in foreclosure, comments you've made on blog posts, tweets, and even more information you thought was personal.

By Anne Fisher, contributor


 

FORTUNE -- Dear Annie: I had a strange experience the other day: I went to a second round of job interviews at a company where I'd really like to work, and a manager there mentioned that he, too, is a fan of a little-known science fiction writer whose books I happen to like.

That was nice, since it gave us something in common besides work, and we had a pleasant conversation. But it dawned on me later that the only way he could possibly have known I liked this writer was, if he had seen my "wish list" on Amazon.com. Is that something employers usually look at? It seems weird. And if they're looking at that, what else are they looking at? -Creeped Out

Dear C.O.: Oh my. The good news is, this company seems to be seriously interested in hiring you, because they've apparently bothered to do -- or, more likely, paid someone else to do -- what's called a deep-Internet search, to glean every scrap of information about you they possibly can. The not-so-cheery news is, they might know a lot more about you than you realize.

The so-called deep Internet (also known as the Deepnet, the invisible Web, or the dark Web) is not new, but enterprising techies have recently come up with ever more sophisticated algorithms for trolling its vast contents. To get an idea of the size of the deep Web, consider: Researchers estimate it's more than 500 times the size of the everyday Internet you can see with an ordinary search engine.

Someone adept at deep-Web diving can find information in databases that have blocked traditional search engines, as well as certain kinds of multimedia files and other formats Google can't reach -- including Web pages unlinked to any other pages, data from password-protected sites, and much, much more.

In practical terms, says Lori Fenstermaker, CEO of online recruiters AutoSearch, this means that "Amazon wish lists can crop up. So can your results from the last marathon you ran, and whose political campaign you've given money to, and whether your house is in foreclosure." Ever filed an application for a patent? Declared bankruptcy? Fallen behind on your child-support payments? Been investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission? A Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) search probably won't reveal any of that, but a deep-Web search could.

"Another thing is, every blog comment you ever posted is liable to show up," says Fenstermaker. "People really should think twice before putting up nasty posts on blogs, especially if they are long enough that you obviously put some thought into them, because employers look askance at people who seem chronically angry or who can't disagree in a civil way. It's a definite red flag."

Indeed, hiring managers often look for any negative mentions of a past or present boss or employer, says Jonathan Schreiber, senior vice president of business development at Pipl, a company that specializes in conducting deep Web searches for recruiters and Fortune 500 companies.

"If you're sending Tweets to your friends bashing the company where you work or used to work, that will turn up," he says. "We don't tell employers who to hire or not hire, we just provide the data, but many of them see that as a dealbreaker."

It's not hard for employers to have these types of searches conducted, either. Pipl, which techie blog TechCrunch.com once described as "a search engine so good, it will scare your pants off," will generate a report on a candidate's deep-Web presence for free, if an employer does just a few per day. For huge clients that may want thousands of searches on a regular basis, fees range from $7,500 to $10,000 a month.

Still, the searches only go so far. "Our searches don't intrude into anything you have designated as private," Schreiber says. "If you have set your privacy controls on Facebook to allow only friends to see your information, for example, we don't go beyond that barrier. It wouldn't be ethical." Likewise, secure sites like bank accounts are off limits, he says.

Even so, says Schreiber, "most people have put a lot more data out there, in various places, than they realize. Blog comments, for instance, seem 'anonymous' to many people because they think the Internet is so vast, how could anyone find that? But the fact is, an employer who does a Pipl search finds a lot more than just your LinkedIn profile. They're looking at a pattern of online behavior that can reveal your whole personality."

Fighting back

In your case, there seems to have been no harm done: You're apparently still in the running for the job, and you found a common interest with a possible future colleague. But, for anyone who suspects there's some dirt on them in the deep Web they'd prefer employers not to see, all is not lost. There are online services that will dig it up and expunge it, for a modest fee. They'll also monitor the deep Web, and alert you if anything new crops up. Reputation Defender, the first and biggest of these outfits, charges around $15 a month to keep your deep-Web image squeaky clean.

"Control of your digital information, your online self, is a problem that is getting bigger every day," says Michael Fertik, who started Reputation Defender in 2006. The company now has customers in 45 countries. "Our research shows that about 14% of employers now are even delving into really obscure parts of the Internet, like virtual worlds" -- evidently on the dubious assumption that your World of Warcraft avatar reveals something about you that an interviewer needs to know.

Note to hiring managers: Before you embark on a deep Web search (or hire someone else to do it), have a word with your company's attorney. Peter Gillespie, an employment lawyer at Fisher & Phillips in Chicago, discourages his corporate clients from deep Web diving. Why? "You run too big a risk of finding out something you would not be allowed to ask in an interview," he says.

For instance, hiring managers are prohibited by law from asking if an applicant has ever had cancer. What if a deep Web search reveals his or her membership in a cancer survivors' support group? "Are you going to be able to put that completely out of your mind?" says Gillespie. "What if you decide not to hire this person for some other reason, but he or she hits you with a lawsuit claiming it was an ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) violation?"

He adds: "HR departments have policies in place that are carefully designed to stay within the law, so stick with those." If that approach seems outdated, Gillespie points out, "bear in mind that employers were somehow able to make perfectly good hiring decisions before the Internet even existed."

Regards,

N


Wednesday 7 July, 2010

Genuine outrage or Storm in a Tea Cup?

Genuine outrage or Storm in a Tea Cup?
(Time Magazine Article by Joel Stein)

Do take a look at this article:

It created enough of a furore for multiple TV channels to focus their attention on this article on Prime Time TV.

Enough to prompt me to go take a look at the article.

And, not to my surprise at all, I didn't find too much that is so offensive.

On the contrary, I find much more offensive articles all the time in Indian newspapers and magazines.

Only goes to show the extent to which our society at large has become intolerant.

Wonder why some RSS types have not woken up to the remark in the article including the words "a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose." to describe Indians.

Perhaps they are bored declaring bandhs and burning effigies!

Let me clarify: I certainly don't claim to share the thoughts of Joel Stein nor with his choice of words. However, believing in the doctrine of "Freedom of Speech", I would like to think that people can write things that I don't entirely agree, as long as it is not illegal or beyond the boundries of civil society. Those who disagree have a couple of choices:

  • Don't read such stuff
  • Don't agree with such stuff
  • Express your disagreement vocally

But, to waste prime time TV on such trivial stuff probably gives undue & unwarranted importance to the contents of the so-called offensive stuff.

Believe me, till yesterday, I had not heard of Joel Stein! And I tend to read a lot.

Regards,

N