Category Archives: Science and Technology

Papa pressure

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A Silicon Valley company with a Hyderabad office has started bringing in the parents of their new hires for a schmooze session. Impressed with the respect accorded them, the parents tell their kids to stay with the company rather than quitting and joining Microsoft.

In a culture where parents yield enormous influence over their adult children’s decisions, pitching the parents is a novel way to retain talent in a brutally competitive environment… “The managing director of the company himself welcomed our parents,” says Beeraka. “Once [my father] heard from the company, he insisted that I stay…” Sixty percent of the 35 new recruits brought at least one parent to the orientation in August, and, for the first time in several years, Sierra has experienced no turnover.

You’ve found our hidden exhaust port, Luke. In desi culture, there’s no end to this. At a recent wedding, I just heard a 90-year-old man refer to his 65-year-old son as ‘the boy.’ Next thing you know, realtors, car companies and wireless carriers will be asking mom and dad to pick your goodies 🙂

Heck, if they already pick your mate…

Mobile Mother India

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Like the rest of you, I’ve been swamped with holiday and family obligations these past few weeks. My Bloglines feeds have piled up and it’s going to take me forever to catch up on what some of you (supplesomething, Brimful, J …) have written. I devoted my surf-time today to reading the 200 (!) posts that had accumulated from Om Malik on Broadband.

Om–whom I sweat ridiculously–had an interesting tidbit over at GigaOm; it stated that India is “Truly, a Cell Phone Nation”. He goes on to state:

There are 44 million cell phone users in India, versus 43 million land lines. IndiaÂ’s mobile market will grow 40% every year through 2007.

I don’t know why that statistic captured my attention so completely, but it did. More cell phone users! I guess it makes sense now that I think about it…

This article has more:

India has also emerged as the second-largest market after China for mobile handsets. Mobile phone makers such as Nokia , Siemens, Sony Ericsson , South Korea ‘s LG and Philips are racing to offer newer models to keep pace with demand.

I think one of my favourite things about India is the juxtaposition of future with past, forward with backwards. I’m ridiculously excited (especially after reading posts like this) to see what develops…

Jetting to Bangalore

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Jet Airways, the leading private airline in India, is far more luxurious than American ones: brand-new Airbus jets, hot face towels, nimbu pani and watermelon juice, coffee candies, sumptuous red and orange linen napkins bound in velvet rope, a choice of North or South Indian meals (ever had hot idli sambar and utappam on an airplane?), and a never-ending stream of tea and coffee. And all this on short-haul domestic routes rather the overseas ones served by Singapore and Virgin.

The Indian government will now allow Jet and Air Sahara to fly international routes, although it continues to shelter the lucrative Middle Eastern routes from competition. The airlines are presumably on their own for buying landing slots.

Indian airports are also in dire need of investment. On a recent trip, I could get wireless Internet access at the Delhi and Bangalore airports. However, they otherwise still resemble small regional airports in the U.S.: open-air gates, buses instead of jetways and a vanishingly small distance from gate to parking lot. They’re like the old terminal at San Jose before the tech bubble.

But with an astonishing 20% annual growth in air traffic, India just signed off on a plan to upgrade 80 airports throughout the country, including brand-new airports for Bangalore and Hyderabad. They’re partying like it’s 1999.

And in the tech-heavy cities, it pretty much is. Driving through Bangalore, I saw buildings that looked exactly like U.S. tech campuses, though smaller. Intel, Dell, Oracle, Accenture and Macromedia buildings abound; on one corner, with a shock of recognition, I came face-to-face with a company started by a friend. I couldn’t help but feel late to the party. With the number of South Indian programmers already working at Oracle, why not hire ’em straight from the motherland 🙂

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Next time, just stick to liquor.

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Not_the_lion_king It’s not often that one hears of a government which is mandating an animal’s extinction; then again, India is and has always been a nation of exceptions. Her Central Zoo Authority (CZA) has decided that it is last call for the “cocktail lion”, a hybrid composed of Asian and African lion genes. All 300 of the mixed cats remaining in zoos and safari parks will be sterilised and allowed to die out, since Indian laws and traditions forbid killing them.

The authorities say the hybrid lions have weakened the blood pool of India’s lions and have turned out to be mangy, emaciated and suffering from mental and physical defects…Critics say that the breeding programmes across India were largely unsupervised over the years.
The end result has been a large increase in “cocktail” lions that have been interbred and are genetically weak. The hybrid animals bear characteristics of both species, but are low on immunity and prone to disease. Some are reported to be suffering from tuberculosis.

Zookeepers first experimented with “cocktails” by cross-breeding their Asiatic lions with African lions who were travelling the country in circuses. At places like Chhatbir Zoo in the Punjab, almost 100 of the cats were created during an era when no thought was given to genetics or preserving certain bloodlines. Zookeepers were focused on the short-term; they bred as many animals as possible, to improve exhibitions. Unfortunately, their careless efforts created the exact opposite result;

The (Chhatbir) zoo’s once healthy pride of lions is now no more than a motley collection of disease-prone animals barely able to stand up.
According to zookeepers, almost 45 lions have died over the past three years. “We lost 13 cubs in one go,” remembers wildlife warden Neeraj Gupta. Almost all the deaths occurred because the animals suffered from severe immune deficiency which slows down or prevents healing whenever the animals fall sick or are hurt.
…While the zookeepers do their utmost to treat the animals and keep them as comfortable as possible, there is little they can do for those born paralysed or for others whose open wounds refuse to heal.

. .

BBC NEWS: Feeble roar of the hybrid lions Continue reading →

Liliputian Brown Baby

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rumaisa.jpg The BBC reports on the world’s smallest baby:

The world’s smallest known surviving baby has made her first public appearance at a US hospital, alongside her slightly larger twin sister. Rumaisa Rahman weighed just 244g (8.6 ounces) when she was born prematurely in Chicago on 19 September – less than a can of soft drink. Rumaisa’s Indian-born parents hope to take her and sister Hiba to their home in the city by early next month.

Continuing with the theme of comparing babies to common consumer goods, we are told that

Rumaisa was about the size of a mobile phone when she was born, 15 weeks before her due date. She still only weighs 1.18kg (2 pounds 10 ounces).

Amazingly enough, the twins can “survive” on their own, even though they were only around 4.3 months into term before they were delivered via C-section:

“They’re maintaining their temperature, they don’t need an incubator…. They’re normal babies,” said Dr William MacMillan at Loyola University Medical Center.

To provide a browner basis for comparison, I estimate this baby’s head was roughly the size (and possibly even the weight) of a gulab jamun when she was born ….

Baazee.com CEO arrested over sex clip

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The Baazee.com CEO, Avnish Bajaj, was arrested yesterday by the Delhi police due to the sale of the infamous mobile phone sex clip via his auction site. Baazee.com was recently acquired by eBay. Bajaj, a U.S. citizen and Harvard MBA in his early 30s, languished in a Delhi jail last night because of a tortured Indian theory of vicarious liability. It’s as if eBay CEO Meg Whitman were thrown in jail due to the sale of off-color items on eBay. The legal analogies in this case are phone companies and ISPs, where the high volume of traffic precludes censorship, rather than a common criminal case. The guy who should actually be in jail is the student who filmed and distributed the clip without his girlfriend’s consent. The Delhi court’s actions reek of opportunism to me– to take a stand on a high-profile case in a sexually repressed society. It’s all high-volume throat clearing.

Disclaimer: Bajaj is a friend of a friend.

Update: Bajaj was denied bail and remains in jail. Condoleezza Rice has asked the Indian government to guarantee him a fair trial:

The arrest of the Baazee CEO, who has been based in Mumbai for the past four-and-a-half years, has perplexed many in the Indian establishment as Bajaj has responded to summons to help the investigators probing the case. “He, as well as Baazee.com, had been cooperating in the investigations. The arrest has come totally out of the blue…”

Yesterday, Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay… called up from the US to reassure Baazee staff… Bajaj’s counsel Dinesh Mathur pleaded that his client had at no point attempted to evade the police. Moreover, with the site having more than 75 lakh listings, it was impossible to scan each and every item being traded.

Archaic Indian law apparently does not recognize electronic signatures:

Mathur said the video clip… was taken off the site after it was brought to the notice of Baazee officials that it was violating a user agreement… The magistrate, however, said the user agreement did not stand as it was not “signed” and was just a photocopy of a document.

The bullshit continues to fly.

Update 2: The Gray Lady finally cobbles together wire reports four days later.

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The Indus Script: Was it really a script?

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Describing what is sure to be a highly controversial idea, Science Magazine [paid or institutional access required] publishes an article about a group of scientists who are calling into question whether the Indus script is really even a script, in the traditional sense. Because of the fact that this article will not be accessible by most, I will liberally quote for the benefit of SM readers.

For 130 years scholars have struggled to decipher the Indus script. Now, in a proposal with broad academic and political implications, a brash outsider claims that such efforts are doomed to failure because the Indus symbols are not writing

Academic prizes typically are designed to confer prestige. But the latest proposed award, a $10,000 check for finding a lengthy inscription from the ancient Indus civilization, is intended to goad rather than honor. The controversial scholar who announced the prize last month cheekily predicts that he will never have to pay up. Going against a century of scholarship, he and a growing number of linguists and archaeologists assert that the Indus people–unlike their Egyptian and Mesopotamian contemporaries 4000 years ago–could not write.

That claim is part of a bitter clash among academics, as well as between Western scientists and Indian nationalists, over the nature of the Indus society, a clash that has led to shouting matches and death threats. But the provocative proposal, summed up in a paper published online last week, is winning adherents within the small community of Indus scholars who say it is time to rethink an enigmatic society that spanned a vast area in today’s Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan–the largest civilization of its day.

The Indus civilization has intrigued and puzzled researchers for more than 130 years, with their sophisticated sewers, huge numbers of wells, and a notable lack of monumental architecture or other signs of an elite class (see sidebar on p. 2027). Most intriguing of all is the mysterious system of symbols, left on small tablets, pots, and stamp seals. But without translations into a known script–the “Rosetta stones” that led to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform in the 19th century–hundreds of attempts to understand the symbols have so far failed. And what language the system might have expressed–such as a Dravidian language similar to tongues of today’s southern India, or a Vedic language of northern India–is also a hot topic. This is no dry discussion: Powerful Indian nationalists of the Hindutva movement see the Indus civilization as the direct ancestor to Hindu tradition and Vedic culture.

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Just say NO to Ayurveda

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The Boston Globe and several others report on researcher’s findings that many herbal pills and powders sold in Indian stores in the U.S. are dangerously high in heavy metals.

The scientists, first alerted to the danger by reports of patients suffering seizures after taking herbs, discovered that one in five of the imported products they bought in local shops had levels of heavy metals sometimes hundreds of times higher than the daily amount considered safe for oral consumption. The same products are sold nationwide.

The herbal pills, powders, and liquids are a cornerstone in the practice of Ayurvedic medicine, an ancient holistic system of health that originated in India and that emphasizes the mind-body connection. It relies on herbs and oils to treat illness and prevent disease. An estimated 80 percent of India’s 1 billion adults and children use the remedies as a routine part of health care.

The herbs are not regulated in India, and in this country, unlike prescription drugs or over-the-counter medicines, the imported products can be sold without rigorous scientific testing, subject only to the same standards that apply to food.

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Forbes names India’s richest

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Forbes magazine released its inaugural list of India’s 40 wealthiest businessmen, with half of the entrants hailing from the nation’s burgeoning technology and pharmaceutical sectors.

Topping the list with $11.2 billion is London-based steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who holds 88% of Mittal Steel. The company will become the world’s largest manufacturer of steel following their acquisition of rival International Steel.

Other facts of note:

  • Nineteen created their fortunes from scratch
  • Eleven made their money in technology
  • Nine made their fortunes in pharmaceuticals
  • Forty percent live in Bombay
  • Two Patels made the list, which means I will spend this weekend digging through the family tree.

Forbes: India’s 40 richest

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I love watching movies on tiny screens. Not.

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Anna_looks_like_my_stepmom

So my favourite MC leaves me a message about this article from ABC News…apparently an Indian cell phone company is going to broadcast a new Bollywood phil-im in its entirety, for free. On their customer’s mobiles. (Well, the customers who dished $270 for a phone that can stream video…)

“Rok Sako To Rok Lo,” or “Stop, If You Can,” will be available to Bharti Tele-Ventures customers in 11 Indian cities, provided their phones have the supporting technology, said Atul Bindal, a director at India’s second-largest cellular service provider.

They are boldly and potentially annoyingly going where no company has gone before:

Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd. will be “the first cellular service in the world to premiere a full-length movie on mobile phones,” Bindal said. “I am certain that this service will add a whole new dimension to the concept of mobile-based entertainment.”

“Rok Sako To Rok Lo” stars Sunny Deol (pictured)…and no one else, meaning the film’s other actors aren’t well-known, exciting or important. 😉 Directed by Arindam Chaudhary, the teen flick will debut on cell phones Thursday, and be released to regular old theaters Friday.

Don’t everybody try and drain your cell phone batteries at once:

A maximum of 200 people will be able to connect and watch the movie simultaneously, and the movie cannot be copied or replayed.

If this novel experiment in using mobile phones for something other than, oh, talking, is successful, Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd. may air other phil-ims, for a phee. 😉