Saturday, August 25, 2012

An advantage university-based business schools have over standalone business schools

This is something I've realized now at NUS Business School. NUS Business School is based in the heart of NUS. NUS itself is a sprawling university with centers and schools for science, law, arts, social science, computing, engineering, mathematics, design, medicine, dentistry, public policy, music, and others.

NUS also has full-fledged arms that cultivate, facilitate and promote entrepreneurship and technology commercialization - NUS Enterprise, along with NUS Entrepreneurship Centre (NEC) and NUS Industry Liaison Office (ILO) - as well as full-fledged and well-endowed research wings.


One of the electives this semester is Technopreneurship, and an optional add-on to that is the Frugal Innovation Lab. The latter, in particular, is about creating a working prototype of an innovative product or service, along with a comprehensive business plan to commercialize it. The teams in this Lab are all cross-discipline, with individuals from engineering, science, business and entrepreneurship blended together and made to work like a startup, complete with funding. Need information about IP protection or patents? Find someone related to law. Need advice on human anatomy? Head to medicine. Materials? You have it.

That's where I realized the potential and power of a business school that's inside a university. You have experts and students from all disciplines right next to you, and forming cross-faculty teams is effortless. Business schools in universities such as NUS, NTU or IITs have this unique advantage that standalone schools don't necessarily have. It's about fully utilizing these resources.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Cheapest way to call Singapore, from anywhere!

Mobile phone service is quite expensive in Singapore. All three mobile operators - SingTel, StarHub and M1 - offer prepaid plans and rates that are identical for all practical purposes. The following table from SingTel's website is almost identical to corresponding tables from StarHub and M1.


However, there's a clever way to make ultra-cheap calls to landline and mobile phones in Singapore - and it's Skype! Look at the table below. Only ~1 USD for s.i.x.t.y m.i.n.u.t.e.s of calls [at current exchange rates, calls made using Skype cost one-seventh of the mobile phone rate at peak hours, and if you go for the 400 minutes subscription, this difference becomes over one-tenth]. This is literally dirt cheap. Unlimited Singapore is only ~7 USD per month! For people who make a lot of outgoing calls, this is a steal!

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Should we punish the actual perpetrator of the crime, or the seller of the means which was used?

A quick answer to this question is that we should punish the actual perpetrator - the criminal. I strongly disagree with the recent rulings in America that pronounced as guilty Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom. While there is no doubt that Megaupload [and similar websites such as RapidShare] was misused by some/many of its users to illegally acquire/spread copyrighted content, that misuse by its users doesn't and cannot make Megaupload the perpetrator.

Should firearms/guns be banned in America because some people misuse them? Should knives be banned because they are/were used to commit murders? Should we ban Google because it helps people to commit plagiarism? Should liquor be banned because it's the cause of so many accidents and conflicts? Should we ban the Internet because people use it to illegally acquire/spread copyrighted content? Should bikinis and miniskirts be banned because they can lead to rapes? Should DVRs be banned because people use them to store copyrighted content and to skip adverts? Should aerospace engineering be banned because it's used to design missiles?

Why are we punishing the products, the tools, the means, and not the actual criminals? Why doesn't the American government identify and beat the hell out of the people who uploaded/downloaded the content?

Related news:

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Some amazing statistics about Singapore's GDP

All figures for area, GDP and population ["facts"] are from Wolfram Alpha, as on 14-Aug-12. The analysis and calculations are mine.
  • Area of Singapore= 697 square km [can be thought of as a square with side 26.4 km]
  • Area of India= 3,287,000 square km [can be thought of as a square with side 1813 km]
  • Real GDP of Singapore= USD 184.6 billion in 2009 [price adjusted to 2008 USD]
  • Real GDP of India= USD 1,379 billion in 2009 [price adjusted to 2008 USD]
  • Real GDP per square km for Singapore= USD 264.85 million
  • Real GDP per square km for India= USD 419,531
  • Number of times India is larger than Singapore [area]= 4,716
  • Number of times India is larger than Singapore [real GDP]= 7.5
  • Interpretation #1: India is 4716 times larger than Singapore [geographical area], but India's real GDP is only 7.5 times larger. Amazing land utilization in Singapore!
  • Ratio of real GDP per square km of Singapore to that of India= 631
  • Interpretation #2: Singapore produces six-hundred-thirty-one times the GDP for every square km as does India!
  • Caveats: We must remember that there are some inherently non-productive land areas in India, such as barren deserts, mountains, etc., and also that Singapore's population density is 17.2 times that of India. We should divide the 631 we had got by 17.2 to get 36.7, a more practical estimate of relative land utilization obtained by normalizing population density.

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Laughable double-standards of America

Excerpts from a recent story in the Los Angeles Times:

"Hillary Rodham Clinton warns outsiders against sending in terrorist fighters."

"On a visit to South Africa, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was also warning about terrorist infiltration of Syria and interference by outsiders."

"Those who are attempting to exploit the misery of the Syrian people, whether by sending in proxies or sending in terrorist fighters, must recognize that that will not be tolerated,"

"The United States has publicly assailed what it calls Tehran's "destructive behavior" in Syria."

All of these statements make me laugh. America and Hillary Clinton are corrupt beyond what words can describe. They both have the shamelessness to arrogantly warn others about outside interference. It's just laughable.

UPDATE (18-Aug-12): I'm laughing at the statements given by USA regarding Britain's (not Great Britain's) open threats to raid the embassy of Ecuador in London.

The proposal was adopted despite the US saying OAS has nothing to do with the issue.

Good!

The US State Department stated earlier on Friday that the OAS has “no role” to play in a “bilateral issue between Ecuador and the United Kingdom.” Not party to the 1954 OAS Convention on Diplomatic Asylum, the United States“does not recognize the concept of diplomatic asylum as a matter of international law,” the statement read.

America, how about having the same stance on other countries' internal [Syria, etc.] or bilateral issues [Iran-Israel; North Korea-South Korea; China-Philippines; India-Pakistan]? How about having the same stance on diplomatic asylum in your embassy in China?

Overall I'm happy that Britain is getting defamation and hard slaps from all over the world. It'll finally wake up from the dream it is in and realize that in today's world, it's no more significant.

UPDATE (18-Aug-12): There's this interesting story on RT in which a very valid point is raised - where is America's condemnation of the sentencing of a prominent human-rights activist in Bahrain?

We urge Russian authorities to review this case and ensure that the right to freedom of expression is upheld,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said.

Don DeBar, a New York-based activist and journalist, believes America’s negative reaction to the Pussy Riot verdict, but a lack of attention towards the human rights situation in Bahrain is indicative of its double standards.

So what’s happening is that the United States, for some reason that will become apparent later, is stirring this up to make Russia look as if it were a repressive, lawless state while the United States, which has more incarcerated people than the next three countries on the planet, and that’s only in absolute terms; in relative terms – more than any other country on the planet. The United States has all these people in jail and is going to lecture countries about how their legal process should work. I think it has no credibility around the world, and I think it’s shameful.

Where are you America?

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Idea Cellular divorced me...

My DCE-days cellular number - 9891681609 - I've lost it. When I returned from South Korea a few weeks back, I was no longer the owner of my own prepaid mobile number. Idea told me yesterday that they had sold my "lifetime" mobile number to some Krishna Sharma while I was in Seoul, without asking or telling me. Not even an email came to my registered email address. Idea folks tell me that there's no way that I can get back my number now. In fact, they tell me that it isn't even my number now. I've been using this number for 6-7 years now. At an average rate of ~20 rupees per day [600 a month], I've paid them in excess of INR 50,000 over the last 7 years. Yes, INR fifty thousand in balance recharges. Maybe even more, since I've extensively used my phone for all types of services - voice, SMS, Internet access and roaming. And Idea didn't give any value to this years-old relationship. All my friends, relatives, business relations and institutions [banks, insurance companies, past employer, etc.] have my this number registered in their records. Now I'll have to change my registered mobile number in all of these records.

This "lifetime" relationship didn't last a lifetime. It's sad, but as always, life is about moving on.

Thursday, July 05, 2012

Comparing a suicide bomber to a cruise missile [UPDATED]

This thought came to my mind yesterday, when my family was having some discussions about a news story, while we were watching TV.

What is a suicide bomber like? He's like a very, very intelligent cruise missile. A cruise missile cruises its way to its target. It can be steered during its course, and it explodes and damages/destroys its target when it finally reaches it.

If we forget for a while that a suicide bomber is a human whereas a cruise missile is a machine, a suicide bomber can be thought of as a cruise missile that happens to also have all the nice qualities of a human - intelligence, locomotion, dexterity, etc. A cruise missile might be able to carry higher and deadlier payload [and faster too], but contemporary cruise missiles can't beat the intelligence of a human suicide bomber. The bomber can look around at the situation and can continuously adjust his approach depending upon changing circumstances - his path, his gestures, his timing, etc. - in order to ensure a successful kill. A modern cruise missile cannot do this.

Yet, fundamentally the method and purpose of both weapons remains the same - rapidly travel to the target while evading detection, and damage/destroy the target in a suicidal way.

UPDATE [10-Nov-15]: Armed drones carrying cruise missiles can also be roughly thought of as a type of cruise missile, since both follow a "cruising" path, or more correctly, a path that can be dynamically adjusted in real-time. On the other hand, while missile-laden drones provide photographic and other data, cruise missiles don't [or could cruise missiles be armed with high-speed cameras to provide photos/videos of the path that the missile traverses?].

Monday, June 11, 2012

Evidence of media bias at The New York Times

This post is supposed to be a "living post" that'll be updated as I come across more biased NYT stories. PDF versions of all stories mentioned here can be found in this SkyDrive folder.

Syrian Forces Shell Cities as Opposition Picks Leader, NYT, 10-Jun-12 [link]

Why biased? NYT is careful about what it presents as a fact [versus a claim]. If the US claims [even if without any proof] that Assad killed Syrian people, NYT typically writes something like "Syrian Government Shells Civilians", thus presenting the unproven claim by US as a fact. But if something is said by Assad or by Russia's Sergey Lavrov, NYT typically writes something like "Syrian Government Denies Responsibility For Massacre" [instead of "Syrian Government Not Responsible For Massacre"], thus presenting Assad's or Lavrov's claims as claims. But in the story linked above, the NYT presented as fact something that was simply a claim by "opponents of the government" [we don't even know who these opponents exactly are]. Why did NYT present the alleged shelling claimed by opponents with unclear identity as a fact in the title, when Syria's or Russia's statements are never presented as facts, either in the titles or in the body of the news?

Update [25-Jun-15]: Documents on 2012 Drone Strike Detail How Terrorists Are Targeted, NYT, Jun'15 [link]

Why biased? NYT has used the authoritative term Terrorists in the title of this news story, whereas it is well-established that the targeted folks are suspects. This is how the NYT secretly brainwashes its readers.

Saturday, June 02, 2012

Were Live Tiles in Windows Phone inspired by iOS? Could Android combine iOS icons with Live Tiles?

First - looking at the icon of the Calendar application in iOS [which shows the current date in the icon itself], it's possible that the designers of Live Tiles [images below] at Microsoft were inspired by the live icon of the Calendar app in iOS. Perhaps they thought of making every icon live, and then they realized that they could just do away with the icons and make sort of "boxes" or zones that are live.

Current date seen in icon of Calendar app on iOS

Live Tiles in Windows Phone

Second - looking at the photo of Android 4.0 running on Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, it seems that Google is trying to combine the traditional method of using icons, with the Windows Phone method of using Live Tiles. Both icons and Live Tiles can be seen.

Android 4.0 on Samsung Galaxy Tab 2

Sunday, May 27, 2012

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.