The crash of a Sukhoi Superjet 100 in Indonesia has given a big visibility boost to Russian civil aircraft

I tweeted about the visibility boost to the Superjet 100 a few weeks back. It turns out that even other Russian/Ukrainian civil airliners have got a big, temporary visibility boost. The following screenshots show the number of views that Wikipedia articles of four Russian [or Ukrainian] civil aircraft got in last 30 days [Antonov An-148, Irkut MS-21, Tupolev Tu-204, Tupolev Tu-334].

Engineering versus MBA - is one more important than the other?

The term engineering refers to any type of core job skills. This could include even fashion design skills for a designer, or cooking skills for a chef. By MBA, I mean all non-core job skills.

Is one of these more important than the other? It's a question that people have strong opinions about. I'm both an engineer and an MBA, so I probably have a broader perspective to answer this question compared to folks who are only one of these. However, I might ruffle MBA feathers by claiming that technical skills are more important [and vice versa].

So I'll provide an example: think of a house being constructed. Compare its construction materials, its foundation, and its structural design to engineering, and its interior design, its luxuries, and its paintings, etc., to MBA. A house with only engineering won't attract too many buyers, because they won't like the modest design, the uninspired feel, etc. A house with only MBA will quickly attract many buyers, unaware that the house is flimsy and even dangerous. However, over time these buyers will realize that this nice piece of design is nothing more than a house of cards, and these buyers will flock to the former house.

Speaking more generally, it's important for individuals in each camp to respect those in the other. Pure MBAs should understand and respect that they don't know what the engineers know, and pure engineers should similarly appreciate the knowledge and skills that MBAs have.

Following are some interesting articles/posts about engineering vs. MBA. Note that there is no bias in choosing these three links because these were randomly chosen from Google results without ex-ante knowledge of their contents:

1. Entrepreneur Talk Vs Engineer Talk
2. The Best Degree for Start-up Success, Feb'12
3. MBA vs Engineering, Aug'06

Summarizing the issues faced by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) today

The Indian Institutes of Management, or IIMs, are as prestigious institutions as something can be. However, Indians know and understand that there are some serious weaknesses in these institutes [compared to elite business schools elsewhere]. The following screenshots almost perfectly summarize the key issues faced by IIMs today:

(source)

(source)

Over-emphasis on CAT/GMAT, lower share of female students, non-existent international student share, and significantly lower average work experience. As an Indian, I know more than what the above charts tell - that most of the students at IIMs are engineers [not so in top business schools elsewhere], and that many students at IIMs are fresh out of college, with zero work experience!

As much as I would like to see these great institutes of my country turn into global business schools, I, myself an MBA student, know and understand well that unless these shortcomings are solved, the IIMs stand no chance of challenging elite Western business schools.

How I'm going to study the subject Management Information Systems (MIS) during my MBA

I'm a graduate in Computer Science & Engineering, and one of my several interests is in technology [computer science, consumer electronics, software, etc.]. I've read and used both computer science and information systems for many years now, and now that the MIS course has just started, I've to decide how to most efficiently utilize my time [considering that I already know almost everything being taught in the class].

One way to do this is to read the right books. The officially recommended books are:

1. Management Information Systems - Managing the Digital Firm [Kenneth C. Laudon] [Primary reading]
2. Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges [Andrew McAfee] [Supplementary reading]

I've looked at the first book and it seems that it isn't going to be useful to me. So I've decided to read the second book [by Andrew McAfee] along with a seminal book - Business @ the Speed of Thought : Using a Digital Nervous System [Bill Gates]. I think that these two books alone, especially the latter, will teach MIS [its importance, its potential and its applications] far better than any standard textbook could. I'm confident that I'm making the right decision by not reading the recommended textbook and instead focusing o these two books.

Thank you for a wonderful decade, Windows XP

It was around this time ten years ago that I first bought a [pirated] Windows XP Professional disk [I was only 15 then] for INR 150 [about USD 3], and installed it on my first computer. I vividly remember the day when I was installing the shiny new OS. It was a warm evening and the OS was [slowly] getting installed on my computer which had only 64 MB of RAM [and a Celeron 733 MHz processor, along with a 10 GB hard disk]. I remember that my sister was calling me to eat something, and when I finally went down, I had told her that Windows XP was getting installed on the computer and that this was a very exciting and important thing.

I remember that Windows XP wasn't a beast back then. It occupied much less than 1 GB of disk space back then [it runs into several GBs today], ran swiftly [although the 64 MB RAM was a bottleneck] and brought cool colors to Windows for the first time. It is the first friendly Windows OS ever.

Thank you for a great decade, Windows XP :). I still use and love this OS. If not for Microsoft's policy of ending security updates, I [and many others] would love using Windows XP for many more years.

Spending on food versus spending on missiles... why it is important to spend on both

I've asked myself for a few years if India should really be spending money on missiles, space programs, etc., when hundreds of millions in my country are malnourished and poor. I hadn't arrived at an answer till today, because the thought that India should first curb poverty and only then move to "discretionary" expenditures such as missiles and space launches had continued to make me think.

India successfully tested the Agni-V ICBM today, and further strengthened its strategic deterrence capability. I was reading the news about this launch on The Washington Post, and came across this comment by a reader:

"gratz on being another country with ability to vapourize millions at the push of a button while millions in your own Country bathe in open sewers and eat rat on a stick as a special treat."

I asked myself, is this person right? Should we be feeding our people instead of developing missiles? Then the fate of the countries which didn't have strong military defense/strike capabilities [but, of course, did have some type of lucrative wealth - oil or otherwise] struck me. These nations - Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya - have been destroyed, humiliated and eaten up by the insatiable greed of the West. Their resources have been robbed, their infrastructure has been burnt to ashes, their women have been raped, and their men blown to dust by unending showers of bombs and missiles [official figures from the US say that 7,700 bombs were dropped on Libya to, laughably, "protect the civilians"]. Why? Because all of these countries have wealth but didn't have enough military capability to protect their wealth from murderers, robbers, scoundrels and thieves.

Two dead Iraqi children lie together shortly before a funeral ceremony in Ramadi, Iraq, west of Baghdad, Wednesday, May 19, 2004. A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party in the remote desert near the border with Syria, killing more than 40 people, most of them women and children, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it was investigating. (Source: Cryptome)

Case in point is North Korea. Why doesn't the West militarily strike North Korea, the way it is planning to bomb Iran and Syria? It's because of the single reason that the North possesses enough deterrence in the form of nuclear weapons. North Koreans might be poor, but at least they're alive and safe in their homes!

I would rather see Indians alive and bathing in open sewers, than see them killed and blown to pieces by American missiles. And so India must spend on both food and missiles, or else it too shall be a victim of the West's greed one day. That's the answer I've got today :)

Update [May'12]: Just found a funny, related cartoon.

 

Update [Jan'16]: North Korea rightfully justified its development and testing of miniature hydrogen bombs [thermonuclear bombs] by citing the fate of Iraq [and Saddam Hussein] and Libya [and Muammar Gaddafi]. It'll suffer a similar fate if it doesn't continue developing ultra-powerful weapons.

Update [Apr'17]: North Korea is absolutely right. If it didn't have/develop nuclear weapons, America would bomb it just like that, the way it has recently fires missiles at Syria.

Updates [Aug'17, Sep'19]:

TRUMP INTEL CHIEF: NORTH KOREA LEARNED FROM LIBYA WAR TO “NEVER” GIVE UP NUKES [link]

ASPEN SECURITY FORUM 2017 AT THE HELM OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY [link]

North Korea Suggests Libya Should Have Kept Nuclear Program [link]

DONALD TRUMP JUST ADMITTED THAT IT MAKES SENSE FOR AMERICA’S ENEMIES TO GET NUCLEAR WEAPONS [link]

Frequently, Wikipedia turns out to be less readable and enjoyable than regular encyclopedias

For example, I enjoyed reading about eminent domain on Britannica more than I enjoyed reading about it on Wikipedia. Not only is the text usually written more coherently and logically on Britannica, the ability to easily increase the font size improves readability. The articles are usually shorter, which make them more readable than Wikipedia's long and "cobbled together" articles.

Justifying the higher price of a Sony VAIO VPCYB25AG/B compared to a HP Mini netbook

When some weeks back I had to choose a small, light, ultra-portable notebook for my father [primarily for accessing the Web], I faced a dilemma - whether to go with the cheaper HP Mini [or equivalent alternatives from Dell, et al.], or to go with the relatively expensive Sony VAIO VPCYB25AG/B.

I decided to compare to differences between the Mini and the VAIO and assign individual costs to these differences, in order to determine if the VAIO justified its higher price [INR ~25K, compared to INR ~17.5K for the HP Mini 210-2103tu PC].

The Sony VAIO VPCYB25AG/B

The VAIO has the following extra stuff compared to the Mini, and I've assigned an approximate price to each of the extra things. It has to be remembered that the extra stuff will be enjoyed over the many years one is expected to use the product, so the actual value realized might be significantly more than my conservative estimates.

1. CPU: The CPUs can be considered broadly equivalent. However, judging by some online reviews, the AMD chip in the VAIO beats the Mini's Intel chip in standard CPU benchmark tests by a material margin. INR 1,500 value.
2. RAM: The VAIO has double the amount of RAM than the Mini has, although its memory is slightly slower than the Mini's. INR 1,000 value.
3. Display: VAIO has a 11.6 inches display, compared to 10.1 inches on the Mini. My hands-on experience made me realize that a while a 10.6 inch display fares poorly from a readability perspective [defeating the purpose of buying a machine for Web access], a 11.6 inch display passes the minimum acceptability barrier by a decent margin. INR 2,000 value.
4. GPU: With its AMD Radeon GPU, the VAIO easily beats the Mini when it comes to graphics performance [increasingly important in more and more products, such as in Internet Explorer 9]. INR 1,500 value.
5. HDMI port: The port is absent in the Mini, but available on the VAIO. INR 500 value.
6. Software: The VAIO has a better bundled software package. INR 500 value.
7. Design: The VAIO has a far more elegant and tasteful design than the Mini, one that's both more functional and more pleasing. INR 1,000 value.
8. The "Sony" and "VAIO" flaunt value: One must assign a price to the extra flaunt value that comes from carrying a Sony VAIO. Acer, Compaq, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc., just can't beat the Sony and VAIO brands. INR 500 value.
9. Build quality: A minute spent with both the Mini and the VAIO makes it clear that the Mini doesn't match the build quality, finish, manliness, ruggedness and workmanship of the VAIO. The VAIO gives the feeling of a machine that has been designed and built from scratch, with care and love, while the Mini gives the feeling of an assembled machine, a toy. INR 1,000 value.

I concluded that the extra differential value offered by the VAIO is about INR 9,500, which more than compensates for the INR ~7.5K difference between the actual market prices of the products. Even if the extra value is not taken into account, essential attributes such as display size, design, and build quality made the VAIO the more sensible choice.

Hidden, ugly truth: It's the petrol buyers in India who are subsidizing the price of diesel!

I'm strongly against sale of diesel cars in India. Diesel has been subsidized in India for agricultural use and for use in trucks, etc., and not for use by wealthy owners of Audi, BMW, VW and other cars.

In India, we're repeatedly told that the government subsidizes diesel (and kerosene, etc.) for welfare reasons. Yet we see the super-wealthy segment misusing this subsidy by buying diesel versions of cars (next time carefully look at every Mercedes and Skoda that passes by, you'll notice that a majority of them are diesel-powered).

The ugly truth Indians are not told is that diesel is not subsidized by the Indian government.

It's subsidized by the petrol buyers!

It's the petrol earnings that subsidize the price of diesel. And who pays for petrol? Those with bikes, scooters, Maruti 800s and the scores of other petrol-powered vehicles. While someone driving a Toyota Corolla can easily afford petrol, someone driving an 800 or an Alto or a Nano probably finds it difficult to buy the ever-more-expensive petrol. And yet, this individual finds himself in the uncomfortable and unacceptable situation of subsidizing the fuel costs of a BMW owner, who clearly has enough money to pay for petrol.

Automobile companies in India are clearly trying to profit from the rate difference between petrol and diesel.

Solution: I believe that taking all of the following steps will play a significant cumulative role in ensuring that car-owners cannot and do not misuse the subsidy on diesel available in India:

1. Ban the introduction of new diesel cars (let existing ones sell - read more below).
2. Allow car companies who have already invested in diesel cars to continue selling these for the next 5 years. This will ensure that these companies are not at a disadvantage, after having already invested.
3. Make it mandatory for all fuel stations to sell diesel to cars at a higher price compared to the price charged to tractors, trucks, etc. While there are some obvious holes in this step, it'll help at least partially.
4. Increase the costs of owning and operating diesel cars (by increasing insurance costs, pollution certificate fee, taxes, etc.). This will recoup the subsidy that diesel car owners have misused over the years.

Humans and the right to roam freely on Earth

Sometimes I wonder, animals and birds can freely roam from any place to any other on Planet Earth. Nobody stops them from walking over the mountains, crossing the "borders" and moving or settling in a new territory.

Us humans, arguably the most special species on this planet, in contrast, do not enjoy this right to move freely on our very special planet. I ask why. Why aren't humans allowed to travel freely on Earth? To whom does this planet belong? Can anyone be stopped from traveling to other celestial bodies (like the Moon, or perhaps Mars or to an asteroid)? Most likely not. So why cannot humans travel to any part of Earth, a planet that belongs to all of us collectively but none of us individually...

An aerial view of a dense forest.

Update [22-Jun-17]: Had the exact same thought today, and was going to write a blog post, when found that I've already written it here.