Well, then there are some real desperadoes to subvert national security. There is no REAL privacy per se. Your thoughts can be accessed and these write ups are for some stashing away or indexed in Google for times to come.
At heels of Telecom Scandal comes the “phone tapping“. It has been done before and it would be done in future. Further, it may just be a ploy to divert the attention from malnutrition deaths and alarming infant mortality rates. This is a clear pointer to failure at many fronts and NOTHING is being done about it.
If news remains suppressed, it is “good” for governance.
Weep countrymen. For voting the kaangress in power.
Update : Swapan Dasgupta’s excellent write up in Pioneer.
There is no easy way out for Raja who is in ministry because of political compulsions. Media reports have mentioned about CBI getting into picture for sniffing out the rotten fish in Department of Telecom.
Pioneer has been served a legal notice for it’s cover story. It was obvious.
A determined opposition is hell bent to extract maximum mileage out of it.
All the while poverty deaths are a norm. Our security and foreign policy is going for a toss. Damn.
Husssshhh… Don’t say anything about it. It isn’t mother of all scams but with all kinds of allegations flying thick and fast, I truly believe that it is a “manufactured” dissent. The culpable media is the biggest culprit because we have had scams before or the ones that have not been unearthed as yet. Or is out of public scrutiny or knowledge. Anything goes in the country with right “connections” and will to roughshod over the established procedures.
It the The Pioneer that has been after Raja for over a year now and they have permalinks on their homepage detailing the nitty gritty of the telecom auction. Rules were changed at last minute and it only goes on to say and prove the massive clout that these companies have.
Even though Raja is the face of great Indian Telecom scandal (more than Sukh Ram, if the readers care to remember who had no place to stash his ill gotten wealth), the nameless faceless wheelers dealers and fixers are not known. They would NEVER be known.
Pioneer interestingly had an editorial imploring Man-Moron Singh to sack the wily minister ( in interests on keeping the discussion clean, no one calls him a bastard). It is a scary thought. Companies have access to the corridors of power. At beck and call. They practically own the nation. They RUN the nation. Democracy is notional and till the time we don’t wake up to change the system, it would feed on you and me.
The ill gotten wealth is lost in a black hole. We wouldn’t know the quantum of it because it’s hard to believe the media. Yet, the money gifted away would be recovered from you and me. We would have to pay these buggers in way of “surcharges” or whatever they fancy.
TRAI, as usual, would look the other way. They are in any case, ahem….you know what.
Pioneer breaks the “scandal” causing a ruckus in Parliament.
Google News updates.
This is it. In a few hours, Canonical would “unleash” the power of free open source software. Atleast, it now looks like “Apple Mac Os” surpassing Windows way ahead. I have included the video for those who are coming in from the Windows world. For those upgrading from Koala version, it ought to be more of an incremental update.
Definitely, there is a lot of buzz around it. This being a Long Term Stable release would be supported for 3 years in the long run. There have been stories about 10 million active users of Ubuntu and it is slowly catching up and displacing the hegemony of Windows.
I believe that the next boost is going to come from mobile platform. We need better chips and a longer battery life to support all the fancy applications. Even then I realise that I am quite happy with my E63 running an old tired version of Symbian that has got gone open source. There are no easy answers to the choice of platform but I must admit that Apple iphone remains top of wish list of most of people.
It is because of the radical design factor and the fact that is well integrated with the applications. Ubuntu is going in right direction to update and step up investment in design and integrating social networks in the much talked about “me menu”. With release of Gnome 3 and Gnone “shell”, it would definitely rev up the acceptance specifically from the Mac users…or atleast I hope that it would get a “positive buzz” from those people who sit back on their ivory towers.
All the best Ubuntu. You guys rock!
There have been readers over here claiming that the much advertised Tata Photon Plus and it’s ilk with Reliance Incorporated doesn’t offer the “same speed” as promised.
One has to be completely naive to believe it. Truly. There are enough pussies who believe the dished out crap and once they realize that they have been “shortchanged”, these assholes whine on these columns. I have to delete tonnes of crap piling up because of my prolonged absence from here.
I have been pushing for a community Wifi which is freely accessible. Yet, in the scheme of things, everything needs to be rationed. The only thing which is not is mercifully condoms which I believe, finds a lot of “reluctance” with the populace and explains the burgeoning population in the land.
A free community Wifi would definitely ease up the access. It would lead to content generation and perhaps new ideas. There can be ideas explored to fund it publicly or some advertisement driven model. Google has shown some way. Optic fiber is cheap. But there is institutional lethargy to implement new ideas. The existing apple cart would be sorely upset because the services are nationalized. But then, as I have repeatedly pointed out earlier, public money ought not to be spent on black holes like Employment Guarantee (NREGA) but where it matters the most.
It is a pathetic waste of spectrum for 3G. The existing players have gobbled up, no new players have come in the market and there is a whiff of a huge telecom scam. Much larger in scope and extent than the current IPL hoopla.
We are like this only.
This says it all.
This release promises a radical departure from the previous releases. In brief, more importance to design and integration with social networking would be emphasized with faster boot up times.
Get it in another 2 days.
I believe that Free Open Source Software can definitely drive up the hardware sales specifically when Ubuntu or it’s ilk can be worked and installed on bare bones hardware aka Netbooks. They can be used for basic internet access specially when cloud computing is getting a big deal. There are issues related to “cloud computing” for sure because the privacy of data can never be ensured despite what everyone says about the “trust factor”.
More importantly is the thrust of Unix (or reworked Linux) on the mobile phones. If 3G is being bandied about, Ubuntu needs to get a piece of action on that front.
It remains my two cents worth of opinion though.
Worth it.
Bharati has bought over Zain telecom in Africa. The exact details are “obscured” and frankly, I didn’t really bother much over the period of time because it was a “meh” news. I believe that Bharati has done the right thing because even if this is “over valued” deal, it would add to it’s stature. All the more, it would help Bharati to negotiate (on very favorable terms) for the 3G equipment only for the scale. Because size DOES matter.
All the more Bharati Telecom now needs to step up it’s customer acquisition for 3G and retain it’s existing customers before the mobile number portability is cleared for final implementation. This MNP would benefit the newer players in a big manner because the existing customer are fed up of the tardy implementation of the customer care by existing operators.
This is a familiar rant here for the regular readers on the blog and frankly, I am at pains to point out anything new or even “exciting” development. There is NONE. All the more, few operators are crying hoarse about EVDO or fancy WiMax (and some operators claiming that the existing technologies would not be able to support the data requests), some of them talk about “blazing speeds”, some like Tata Photon Plus are reducing their prices for the modem and very gladly claim that they would shift the existing customers to “higher speed slots”. Some like Reliance are still persisting with hollowed out infrastructure. Puke.
Assholes. Thats the word that comes on top of mind recall.
Now this is purely a personal opinion. We are a desperate nation. A hungry nation. An impatient generation. My “forefathers” would have been happy to accept the present state of affairs. When standing in a long queue was the norm for landline connections. One needed the “right approach” and ability to swing the deal in your favour. When the bloody lineman was the God because it was “His” mercy that your telephone worked.
We are a far cry from the “bastards”. But that mentality lingers on. It still does.
Maybe, in the backdrop of Bharati buying out the majority stake in Zain assumes more significance. For the first time, a company has thought big. They are planning big. They are now overturning the rules of the game on to favor themselves. I hate them for keeping the pace out; be it broadband or be it mobile service.
Although, “not exciting” but nevertheless, a significant development.
