Be proud to help

My words of wiss-dom : Help others, Be Proud about it, Brag about it.

This is one such bragging session. I helped a poor girl (extremely unacceptable bad quality of life ) by helping her getting money for her heart surgery - 50 000 rs(it covered all the expenses , even post operational ). she is live and kicking now, and I have seen her just once in my life :). I didn't put any money, (i don't even get enuf porketmonney) . I just sincerely acted as her agent and did things that will make her get money. ( this process by itself is does not hold any relevance in this post- it requires one for itself).

Now, the usual reasoning is that if you help any one in any way, you are not supposed to keep saying about it - this is completely wrong, you can say it if the others can never findout who the benefeciary is.

Let me tell you why :
* I got this chance to help because someone who knew that i like to help others called me and asked me to do something, this clearly shows that if more people know that you help, then you get more "help me/ somebody else" request so, you have a high probability of doing something worthwhile.

* As you keep helping, you gather much needed reputation. For example, someone who knew that i am involved in helping cancer institute sent me money as donation to the institute. the moral: you become the "proper channel" for others to provide help. they will no more worry about their money or other resources they want to give - they know it is in save 'highly reputed' hands.

There might be a other few good reasons - like you feel happy for a lifetime doing such a thing.

but, helpig does not provide you a erotic or exotic form of happiness like a few successes or scientific achievements (for proof, consult stephen hawkings quotes - has said once that scientific achievement is like sex , to paraphrase ).

helping is a tough job (proof, social service people are considered to be the most unhappy about their job. the most happy are the hair stylists ).

helping sometimes backfires, sometimes they exploit it, might forget you after getting help etc., but, it is worth it,.

so, start helping professionally.

sms chess

hi,
i have come up with this (supposedly) new idea. sms chess! well, from the good old days people seperated by distance play chess by keeping a board at their ends and by mailing their next move to their opponent.. this way, the game is looong... But, i propose a similar style play. so, if you want to play chess with me, we swap our numbers and decide on who gets which color. then we setup a board in our room. now we propose our move as a sms and thus the game continues!... Now, the advantage here is that, the game is played as a continuous process rather than to spend a full hour or more on it... It is fun and it is different.

one might argue that such a thing can be done in chat... but the idea is to make a move as and when you get time and not to sit in front of anything for a long time. no, time boundaries.

by the way, this way of playing chess is what is used by processes in a distributed environment to maintain data consistency when sharing and distributing data... each location has a copy and as a change is made, the state at the other end(s) is modified so that state is consistent at both the places.

xml web services is dying

hi, i found out from reliable sources from the internet that xml web services is losing out. it seems to face the same end as that of osi stack. also, REST is being appreciated by all and is being seen as the next big thing... find out more from artima

The equity funds

In mumbai, one of the booming concepts is that of the real estate
equity... it works like this- you, like many many others, put your
money into an real-estate equity company . Now this company uses
everyone's money to buy a big piece of land in a posh area (like Santa
Cruz) hoping that someone will buy it. Now, such wish can rarely go
unfulfilled. so, when some entity buys that land, part of the profit
thus obtained (which could be huge) is shared among the equity
investors.

Now, unlike the share market equity funds, the probability of a risky
event (like an earth quake ) is very rare in this case - and so, the
investors go laughing all the way to the bank (good enough to start a
humour club in bank branches) all round the year.

Now, I want someone to come up with an equity scheme to invest in
elections - The company uses in depth analysis (provided by iim grads)
to select the best candidate to "invest" in. If he wins, the investors
reap huge benefits not counting the huge margin they will get. the
benefits include, photo session with the winner (if the person had
invested in the cm election) or special attention in all govt. offices
etc, etc.,

Well, there are gray areas - the candidate may lose. He might lose a
no-confidence. Or, the election results in a hung assembly. But hey,
if the company intelligently invests in more than one candidate, there
might be some respite.

It does work!

Well... there you go guys and girls... you just send a mail and
wallah, it appears on your blog. I somehow psychologically feel happy
typing my blog as a mail rather than publishing it directly from
blogger. this just means that i am going to generate more blogs.((sic) must be changed to generate more blog posts)

blog thru e-mail

i just wanted to test if this works... and if it does... how effective
it is.... mailing to my blog seems to be an interesting solution

Bsnl dataone broadband

I always believed that the government of india , though mired in
controversies , has fantastic capabilities (proof- setting up of iit s
and iim s now setting up the "golden triangle" ) . But, i had the
glimpse of it first hand when i applied for the dataone broadband
service.

It feels like heaven to browse the internet using bsnl dataone
connection. . if anyone has any apprehension about how good the
broadband is... forget your doubts. it is the best that an internet hungry
indian citizen can get.

And it is compatible with linux too.

But, one has to see how the response to dataone is after the month of June, that is when the "holiday period" get over ( when unlimited download ends ).

this is my photo :)