Air India offers South African Airways' codeshared flight tickets at a price lower than SAA's price

I just came across this odd-looking pricing. Air India flight AI 7625 from Bombay/Mumbai (BOM) to Johannesburg (JNB) is operated by South African Airways (flight SA 285), and the ticket price for Air India is lower than the price for SAA. I don't find this normal. How can Air India offer a price which is lower than SAA's price, unless Air India is either making a loss, or is making no profit. Shouldn't ticket-booking websites detect such anomalies, and alert users (especially those who're buying tickets for SA 285) that tickets for SA 285 can be had for less, if instead they book on AI 7625? I think they should.

Update (23-Feb-2012): Once again, Air India offers Ethiopian's flights at a lower price. Cleartrip.com should flag this to users who try to buy the Ethiopian flight.

Update [29-Aug-15]: Air India has massively overpriced the Air Astana flights that it's offering under its name, as can be seen clearly in the two screenshots below. Cleartrip.com should clearly alert its users to such points in order to help them save money.

Every flight is a mission...

I love watching flying planes. For years now, I've been looking at planes passing above in the sky. I feel good when I see the bright blinking lights moving through the night sky. I wonder if decades back, anyone had ever imagined that in the 21st century, civilian aircraft will carry millions of individuals across continents and oceans at near-supersonic speeds. I wonder if they had ever thought that colorful blinking lights flying through the night sky will be commonplace in the 21st century...

Screenshots from 'A Tribute to Ethiopian Airlines'

I sometimes think: Even though air-travel has become routine in current times - with thousands of planes flying daily - it (probably) doesn't mean that the complexity and risks associated with it have decreased. Drinks, delicious food, warm hospitality and a multitude of entertainment options might make us forget it, but the truth is that we fly tens of thousands of feet above the earth's surface, where outside air and temperature are unsuitable for human survival, roaring and piercing through the sky at nearly the speed of sound.

Image 1 source; Image 2 source

And so I believe that every flight is a mission. A mission as crucial as a military mission, with safely transporting the set of passengers from destination A to destination B as the objective.

Update (15-May-10 and 1-Jun-10): I watched a few aviation-related videos on YouTube today. The following videos have strengthened my belief that every flight is a mission

1. 747 very late take-off
2. Ilyushin Il-86 late takeoff
3. Amazing take offs at JFK airport
4. Concorde captain changes his mind
5. Crazy dangerous takeoff 767 in severe storm!!
6. Spectacular Take Off CLOSE to the mountains (Juneau, Alaska)
7. Cabin Crew announcement approaching thunderstorm flying at 40,000 feet

Sad that The New York Times copies sentences from its own, previously published stories

"Nearly four years behind schedule, several tons overweight and as much as 7 billion euros ($10.6 billion) over budget, the A400M has become a financial albatross for Airbus and its parent company, European Aeronautic Defense and Space. The company has already written off 2.4 billion euros in costs for a project that continues to expend cash at a rate of around 100 million euros each month." - (Source: Hopes for Costly Plane Are Riding on a Test Flight, The New York Times, 3-Dec-09)


"The A400M has become a financial albatross for Airbus and EADS: nearly four years behind schedule, several tons overweight and as much as €7 billion, or $10.6 billion, over budget. EADS has already written off €2.4 billion in costs for a project that continues to expend cash at a rate of around €100 million each month." - (Source: Airbus Issues Warning on Military Plane Project, The New York Times, 12-Jan-10)


"EADS has already written off 2.4 billion euros in costs for a project that continues to expend cash at a rate of about 100 million euros each month." - (Source: No Progress in Talks for Financing of European Military Plane, The New York Times, 22-Jan-10)


Since when did The New York Times start lengthening its stories by copying stuff from previous stories? Does NYT believe that its readers don't read with enough concentration and interest to be able to remember previously read words, phrases and sentences? What is sad is that the author(s) have chosen to use classic methods to avoid accusations of plagiarism - changing the order of phrases and sentences, replacing € with euro and euro with €, and so on, something that I did not expect from NYT.

Really sad. Because I enjoy reading NYT and trust it.

The benefits and perils of Google Chrome browser (in context of multitasking and productivity)

Without doubt, Chrome has made me more productive - its UI responds nearly-immediately to my actions, making my own speed - and not the software's - the primary barrier/deciding-factor to how fast I can work (which is a good thing). I freely and quickly group and rearrange tabs, and overall, the UI is very responsive.

This was the good part. The bad part is that I've started multitasking much more now. I open many more tabs in Chrome (and Opera), compared to when I'm in other browsers. I can even hypothesize that Chrome/Opera users open more tabs (on average) than Firefox users, who open more tabs than IE users. And all these open tabs give a kind-of restlessness to the mind - they give the feeling of many pending tasks, reducing my mind's concentration.

An example of my typical Chrome window

Guess I'll have to adopt some self-controlling policies to prevent myself from drowning in these tabs.

Moving to Johannesburg (SA), shortly

I'm moving to Johannesburg, South Africa, within a couple of days. So many things need to be done still... Visa, packing, other formalities, learning cooking (!), etc.

Let's see how things pan out.

Well, this is embarrassing...

...but Firefox is having problems restoring a session with no tabs.


This is embarrassing.

(About half of my browsing has already shifted to Chrome/Chromium)

A brand new blog - on my own domain

Close on the heels of the launch of my email address on my own domain comes the launch of a new blog - also on my own domain name. This new blog - named HyperBlog - will be my official blog from now, and is likely to supersede my Main Blog (my Other Blog should continue just fine).

Click to read Rishabh Singla's Google profile

Microsoft should contribute the content of Encarta encyclopedia to Wikipedia / Wikimedia Foundation

Microsoft has decided to discontinue the Encarta line of products, as well as the associated online websites. I assert that Microsoft should contribute the content of all languages of Encarta products to the Wikimedia Foundation, from where this high-quality content can be appropriately added to the various Wikimedia Foundation projects such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, etc. This of course means that Microsoft contribute only those portions of Encarta that it owns, as opposed to the content it has licensed from third-parties.

In my opinion, such a move:

1. Will gain Microsoft a large quantity of favorable press coverage, leading to an overall improvement in the image of the Microsoft brand among Open Source communities, news media, and general public
2. Will give Wikipedia a much-needed shot in the arm, and make it a significantly more useful service for students and other sections of the society
   
3. Will not have have any meaningfully unfavorable implications for any of Microsoft's various businesses

An alternative is to have the Wikimedia Foundation host and manage an online version of Encarta ("en.encarta.wikimedia.org").

Click to see my detailed LinkedIn profile

Email service now active on rishabhsingla.com

Finally, I've setup an email service on my domain name - rishabhsingla.com (though the website itself has no content yet).

The mail service went online at about 9 PM IST, on July 25, 2009. I intend to use my @rishabhsingla.com email-address strictly for professional purposes.

Click here to read my detailed Google profile

Comparison of video types available on YouTube: HQ18, HQ22, HQ35, HQ37, FLV, MP4, HQ, HD, etc.

Update (12-Jul-10): YouTube has recently added support for 4096*3072 ("ultra-high") resolution videos, as reported here.

I frequently download videos from YouTube, using Mozilla Firefox and Video DownloadHelper extension. However, DownloadHelper shows that many YouTube videos have multiple versions available, labeled as HQ18, HQ22, HQ35, HQ37, etc. There does not seem to be any official explanation of these different versions.

So today I set out to

1. Understand the difference between these video types
2. Identify the version with the highest quality

I started with this video (Check out E3 Spotlight) (screenshot below), as it was available in all versions that I've seen on YouTube so far.

Click image to view in full size

The findings are below

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Schema Details
[Video Type]: [Container]; [File Size]; [Ratio]; [Relative Quality]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1. Basic / Normal: FLV; 718 KB; 1x; Low
2. HQ18: MP4; 1.4 MB; 2x; Medium
3. HQ22: MP4; 4.5 MB; 6.4x; Very high
   
4. HQ35: FLV; 2.7 MB; 3.9x; High
5. HQ37: Container?; Size?; Factor?; Super
   

What it shows: HQ22 (and now HQ37 - an even higher-quality video) has the highest quality on YT, if file-size is used as an indicator of video-quality. Additionally, for HQxy, a higher value of xy doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in video-quality over a lower xy value.

Verification of the above findings: The above findings have been found to hold true for all 5 of the following videos (except for HQ37 - which is known to have higher-quality than HQ22, but this has not been verified yet)

1. Windows Gaming at E3
   
2. Gaming for Everyone
   
3. Introducing Google Squared
   
4. Google Health - Product Overview
5. Nokia Booklet 3G first video
   

Result of My Memory Test