Pro-America bias in titles of some articles of English language Wikipedia

I'm giving the example of Comair only to show the pro-USA bias that's present in titles of some Wikipedia articles.

Comair stands for two unrelated airlines - one that was founded in South Africa in 1943, and the other which was founded in the US in 1977. Since the brand name of these two airlines is identical, a natural way to give distinct titles to the respective articles for these two airlines would be:

• Comair (South Africa)
• Comair (USA)

However, as show in the screenshot below, the titles are Comair and Comair (South Africa). Is the former more of Comair than the latter? Why is the country moniker attached only to the South African airline? Is it inferior to the American Comair? This is just one example [out of hundreds] of even Wikipedia assuming American companies, American names, American people, American products, American researchers, etc., as the standard, and those from rest of the world requiring special clarifications or disclaimers.

WHEN WILL THE KILLER DRONE STRIKES STOP??!!

My blood boils whenever I read about America's drones killing suspected militants [and also civilians] in Pakistan and elsewhere [Yemen, etc.]. What kind of ethics or laws allow someone to fire missiles at suspected militants? How does America define suspected militants? How does it unilaterally conclude that its information is credible and sufficient enough to warrant killing someone who they call a suspected militant? Why does America show a blind and deaf attitude towards the civilian "casualties" [I prefer to call it murders] that are frequently reported because of these drone strikes? Who in the world will punish the US for these heinous murders? When will US apologize for the murder of 24 Pakistani soldiers? For the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people of Japan, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the people on Iran Air Flight 655? What right does US have to conduct military operations on other nations' soil? What will America's reaction be if Iran killed suspected militants present in the US?

Some snippets that don't touch even the tip of the iceberg [archived copies of these and other related stories on SkyDrive]:

"Residents and local officials said the strike damaged a nearby mosque where three worshippers believed to be Central Asians were fatally wounded. "They were seriously wounded and died later in the hospital," a security official said." - AFP, May'12

"Pakistani-US relations went into free fall last year, starting when a CIA contractor shot dead two Pakistanis, then over the American raid that killed bin Laden on May 2 and lastly over US air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November." - AFP, May'12

"According to an AFP tally, 45 US missile strikes were reported in Pakistan's tribal belt in 2009, the year Obama took office, 101 in 2010 and 64 in 2011." - AFP, May'12

"The New America Foundation think-tank in Washington says drone strikes have killed between 1,715 and 2,680 people in Pakistan in the past eight years." - AFP, May'12

"An American drone fired two missiles at a bakery in northwest Pakistan Saturday and killed four suspected militants, officials said, as the U.S. pushed on with its drone campaign despite Pakistani demands to stop. This was the third such strike in the country in less than a week... The officials said the victims were buying goods from a bakery when the missiles hit... The U.S. rarely talks publicly about the covert CIA-run drone program in Pakistan... On Thursday, a suspected U.S. drone killed 10 alleged militants in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border... On Wednesday four suspected militants were killed in the village of Datta Khel Kalai in North Waziristan." - AP, May'12

Will this dronecaust ever stop? Is there any regard for life left in America?

Update [31-May-12]: Well, it appears that the timing of my anger was quite right. The NYT has published an article that has an outrageous revelation, that the President of the US personally signs off on every target in the kill list. What makes him different from the people he kills?

Free download Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 (formerly Microsoft Math)

It's generous of Microsoft to have released the excellent Mathematics 4.0 software for free. It's a commendable contribution to students and also the broader education/mathematics/scientific community. I downloaded the software as well as all the associated documents [PDFs, etc.] yesterday, and I thought, why not make the entire package I downloaded available to everyone, sparing them the effort to download each file individually :).

You can download the entire package from this SkyDrive link. The screenshot below shows the contents of the archive:

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.