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Note: This post first appeared on IBN Live  on 9th Dec 2015. Mr. Panda's team's has responded to this (see below) I read with interest a piece by BJD MP, Mr Baijayant Panda on the subject of RS reform. Two reactions that were predictably thrown up. One says we need to reform. The other says we don't. Reform these days is the in word. Easy to wield. As a club. Anyone who opposes the idea is dubbed anti-reform etc. Before we get into it, one needs to question. Why do we need reform in the Rajya Sabha? Reforms need a reason. Merely because it is uncomfortable to the current ruling dispensation is not reason enough. Keep in mind that a minority govt run by the Congress managed to get bills passed both in the LS and the RS. Sure, it wasn’t as productive as it could be. Fact is, till the BJP was on the ascendant, things were proceeding pretty smoothly with several key bills getting passed. It was the rise of an aggressive BJP seeking run roughshod over other views th...

On the front you can see the voltage driver on the left and the Atmel microcontroller on the right. This is an ultra high quality piece of work with black lamination. Seemed to be bit of a shame to start working on it. The clock is done. I haven't had time to take pics and put it up.

There was a man called Anna, who was perpetually on Dharna; Alongwith Bedi and Kejriwal, He fought for the Jan Lokpal; While on fast he survived on Mango Panna.

There was a state called West Bengal, which had debt worth a googol; They decided to call it Poshcim Bongo, as in the second cousin of the drum called bongo; All while didi was having a ball.

There was once a spy, named Ghulam Nabi Fai; He was a Kashmiri who committed hara-kiri; while working for the notorious ISI.

There was a state called Pashcim Banga, as in the western cousin of Vindi Banga; But the bongs called it Poschim Bongo; as they related themselves to the state of Congo; and that was the fate of Paschim Banga.

There was a PM called Manmohan, He didn’t know Lindsay Lohan. Unlike the motormouth Gandhi, He was silent yet handy. That was our man Manmohan.

If the news of Amazon imminent entry has any truth in it. It is the most significant announcement in the e-commerce space in the country. It is also time for Indian e-commerce to take a bow. It has performed yeoman service to the country. But now, Like MacArthur once said about old soldiers, it is time for them to fade away. From the Times of India CHENNAI: World's largest online retailer, Amazon.com is set to enter India, riding on the second wave of e-commerce boom in India. Amazon is in discussions with leading Indian e-commerce players like Flipkart.com, LetsBuy.com and Exclusively.in, among others and may enter the market as early as the first quarter of next year. Acquiring Indian players has been the dominant theme for foreign majors looking to enter Indian market with eBay acquiring Baazee.com and Groupon picking up SoSasta.com to enter the market. But sources say that Amazon is looking to set up operations on its own as its discu...

Story of a death accompanied with an advertising for Insurance. Contextual advertising? I thought you don’t advertise next to death and destruction? Did someone forget to tell ICICI that?

Amazon has release two new Kindles, one with 3G and WiFi (3G is free for use everywhere in the world) for $189 and one model with only WiFi for $139. 3G + WiFi model is available in Graphite and White and the Wifi Model is available only in White Graphite. The landed cost of 3G+Wifi version is ~$284 which is approximately Rs. 13,300 The landed cost of just the Wifi version is ~$216 which is approximately Rs. 10,100 The New Kindle  has better contrast (50% better than the previous models) 21% smaller size (while keeping the same size screen) 15% lighter 20% faster page turns Storage has doubled one MONTH battery life As always the Kindle DX model is available in Graphite for $379, (landed cost $540 which is approximately Rs. 25,200)

Please Note: Prices have fallen further and new variants are not available. Please see this post. http://chirag.patnaiks.in/2010/07/prices-in-india-of-new-kindles-3gwifi.html See below for links to some other posts on how to buy the Kindle in India Original Post: Just eight months after the launch of Kindle International version, the price of the regular sized Kindle has been dropped by a whopping $70 (Primarily because of the drop in price of the Nook reader). The total cost of importing the Kindle is now down to $283. Which is approximately Rs. 13,000 including shipping and taxes. This is about $100 less than before. Quite cool. Makes the device much more attractive than before. If you have been waiting on the sidelines, this is a great time to buy it. Go here and get it. PS: You may get a 2-3K customs deposit refund. In which case the price drops to a range of Rs. 10,000, bang in the price range of the Infibeam Pi. See other posts on the subject below http://chirag.patna...

So Mr. Modi claims " I am still chairman of IPL. Just suspended. Wait - we have just begun. " He is Chairman because he is a member of the BCCI. He is a member of the BCCI because he is representing Rajasthan Cricket Association. He got to be a member of the Rajasthan Cricket Association allegedly through some skullduggery (but let's let that pass for now). His eiligibility was established under THE RAJASTHAN SPORTS (REGISTRATION, RECOGNITION AND REGULATION OF ASSOCIATIONS) ORDINANCE, 2004. This ordinance was later passed by the state assembly in 2005. Now if you look up the text of the ordinance here: http://www.rajasthan.gov.in/rajgovresources/others/RajSports2004Eng.pdf Chapter III of the ordinance talks about elections and clause 15 specifies Schedule C as the eligibility criteria. Schedule C Point 3 states as part of qualifications "He/She has not been convicted in any criminal case." Which brings us back to Lalit Modi's indiscretions of his y...

Folks, some of you may remember an article that ran in TOI some days ago at the height of the Twiteroor fiasco. It was titled "When Modi was booked for robbery" filed on 16th April. It was available on the TOI website at this url http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/When-Modi-was-booked-for-robbery/articleshow/5814316.cms . The article talked about how Modi was indicted for trafficking more than 400 grams of cocaine, second degree kidnapping, assault and conspiracy to kidnap. (In fact there is a Daily Telegraph article that says that Lalit Modi was convicted of these charges). (See related item: Is Lalit Modi even eligible to be IPL Commissioner? ) Guess what? the article is not available anymore at the above URL on the TOI website. If you search for the article on TOI you get a Google search result pointing to the article. When you reach this URL it says "Page not found".This is the error that shows up when you delete a page from the TOI system. Well...

In an unnoticed announcement and what will probably be his last executive decision before being asked to leave IPL over the Twitteroor controversy, Lalit Modi has decreed that anyone watching IPL matches at home on a TV screen size of more than 21” or with a crowd of 4 or more will have to pay “Domestic Display Tax” aka DDT. Modeled after Music industry’s similar fees for playing music in public, this seeks to boost the revenues for IPL and the franchisees. This move came after IPL Franchise owners complained of declining attendance at stadiums and consequently reduced incomes from ticket and allied sales. A Liquor baron who owns a team complained “I have spent crores of rupees and hundreds of hours to personally select cheerleaders, so that I can draw in more people to the stadium and fleece them with overpriced lousy seats, lousier food and fizzless fizzy drinks”. Sick of this fleecing, some people have decided to take matters in to their own hands and throw IPL parties at home. Re...

Just came back from the E4M Quiz competition just now. I won a MP3 player and a t-shirt. The question was what are DVB-H, OneSeg etc. The answer. They are all Mobile TV protocols. Anyway, that's not the last of it. I didn't actually get an MP3 player. I got a letter which says I can collect the MP3 player from Rohini (imagine driving from Noida to Rohini) and after I pay the applicable taxes. So will the cost of travel + the taxes be less than the cheapo MP3 player they are going to give?

Do you see it? Also, no more no-smoking signs. (Though there was an announcement to the effect)

The Amazon Kindle currently does not support Hindi and other Indian languages. So I was experimenting and messing around with the Kindle, till I discovered that we can actually display Devanagari (and Bengali) text as well. Here are a couple of samples. More instructions coming soon.

At my workplace are doing some work with Infibeam for their new ereader Pi. A quick rundown on the specs (from the Infibeam site) Height     188 mm Width     118 mm Thickness     9.5 mm Weight     180 gm Screen / Display     * 6" E Ink® Vizplex     * 600x800 pixels     * No backlight. Daylight readable. Battery Life     7 days File Formats Supported Books / Text     PDF, EPUB, HTML, TXT, MOBI, DOC Images     JPG, BMP, PNG Audio     MP3 Control & Connectors     * 3 mm Audio Earphone Connector     * SD Card Slot     * Mini USB Slot     * Button for 4-Way Navigation & Selection.     * Buttons back, home, plus / minus for size changes etc. Internal Memory     512 MB SD Card Slot upto 4GB   ...

This is a stop motion video of a Jigsaw puzzle my mother and brother put together. I took 300 time delayed photos with my Canon PowerShot Series S5 IS slaved to my laptop and knitted everything together in Windows Movie Maker and this is the end result.

About 10 days ago, a journo from HT Brunch followed the ever popular Kindle in India post and left a comment saying he would like to speak to me regarding my experience using the Kindle. So he called up and asked his questions. He then called back asking if they could photograph the Kindle (amusingly HT, which publishes a Kindle edition did not have a Kindle handy to shoot) which he did against the backdrop of my wife's Agatha Christie collection. (in case you are curious, the book open in the Kindle is one from the Star Wars series). I was quoted some. You can read the story here .