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March 1, 2008

Supreme Court (SC) decision & divorce

Filed under: General,Posts from old blog — Pradeep Mishra @ 7:23 am
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Friday, March 31, 2006


Recently SC, in one of his ruling, has read a very important decision on dissolution of marriage i.e. divorce. “The general rule in all questions of cruelty is that the whole matrimonial relations must be considered, that rule is of special value when the cruelty consists of not violent acts but of injurious reproaches, complains, accusations or taunts. It may be mental such as indifference and frigidity towards wife, denial of a company to her, hatred and abhorrence for wife or physical, like acts of violence and abstinence from sexual intercourse without reasonable cause,” a Bench of Justice Ruma Pal and Justice A R Lakshmanan said.( http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=64692 ) SC said the process of divorce should be simplified in case couple is just living together for the sake of only reason that they are married, without any physical & emotional attachment. SC also stated that if required Hindu Marriage Act (HMA) should be amended.

SC’s decision has raised many questions like what should be criteria for deciding that there is no attachment left in between the couple, whether Indian society is ready for it. Right now couple seeking for divorce have to go to court again and again for divorce or they don’t go for divorce because a heavy amount has to be paid.

Before going directly over the implications of the decision let me talk some thing about marriage. Marriage in the current generation is not same and its overall picture is changing fast, especially in urban areas. The days when parents used to select life partner for their children are fading out. Youth wants independence in selecting their life partner after all it’s their life. Which is absolutely right and I think most of the parents would agree with me. In most of the cases of couples seeking divorce, each of the persons is equally education and working. At some point of time their needs, expectations clashes which gives birth to divorce need. Now the question arises if youth are selecting their life partners themselves then why they finally landing up with marriage dissolution. The reason is very simple. In this fast & forward life people are moving very fast and so does their relationship. People are not giving sufficient time to grow up their relationship. They don’t understand clearly each other’s needs. And moreover since each person is having his or her own ambitions they don’t want to bend even a little. Old days there was a lot of compromise in between the couple and I won’t deny that most of the time it was ‘she’ who had to bend a lot. People were not having that much ambitions and life was not that much hectic. I won’t say that current way of marriage is wrong it’s completely correct and of course better than old form but my point is people are not giving sufficient time to build up the relations which has to be a life long relation.

When ever there is question of divorce, division of assets should also be a point of discussion. How the wealth should be divided in the case each of the persons is working and in case only husband is working? Most of you would say 50-50 but what about children. In today’s scenario since people are not getting divorce easily on the grounds that they are not ‘attached’ to each other, they are living under one roof and so their children. If couple will start getting divorce very easily what will be effect on children. Person can at least live together so that there is no affect on their children. However there is other side of coin as well. Decision will certainly help new couple desperately seeking divorce being unhappy with their married life due to any of the reasons specified in the decision. The decision will also help to the couple whose children are enough mature to understand ‘divorce’. But I think the percentage of new couple (married for no longer than 1-1.5 Years) seeking divorce is much more than the old couple.

The main point is that the couple has to understand the implications of divorce. The decision is really a positive step but its undue advantage should not be taken. Before going for divorce they should first think about at least their children because there are other lives associated with their life.

Caste-ism

Filed under: General,Posts from old blog — Pradeep Mishra @ 7:19 am

Posted on Friday, April 14, 2006

Recently HRD ministry has proposed an additional reservation of 27% for OBC in higher institution like IITs and IIMs. That makes total 52.5% reservation as there is already 22.5% reservation for SC/ST. I don’t see any logic behind the proposal except banking upon OBC bank votes.

The proposal is supported by arguments like we want a social uplift, we want all the classes to excel equally in their life. Is it so? I completely disagree with the argument. In this way we are going to divide the society completely on the basis of caste. What are we going to gain having reservations in the high institutions when our primary and junior education is not enough strong. IITs & IIMs are kind of end days of education (For most of the students) and by providing reservation at this stage I don’t we are going anywhere. Take an example of climbing staircase if you reserve top 2-3 positions for some people and people are not able to pass even 2-3 staircases how are they going to reach at the top position. That means in this way ineligible candidate would be reaching at the top because you have some seats reserved for ‘particular type’. We should first make the foundation strong so that these types are equally competitive.
As said by JNU professor Dipankar Gupta on CNBC TV18 it ultimate it boils down to what how we wish to shape the idea of India. Is it going to be an India dominated by caste, or do we look at ‘capacity building’ of weaker sections of society? Do you want to see India divided purely on the basis of ‘Caste’? If you really want to empower weaker class then bring them above poverty line and remember there is difference between ‘Backward Class’ and ‘Weaker Class’.
I have seen lots of persons from a well to do family enjoying reservation just because they are labeled with some ‘ABC’ at the end of their name. Is it fair? I am an IIT Alumni and I have seen what happens really in IIT with these backward classes. Very few of them are able to come into mainstream of IIT and it is not because other people don’t let him come into mainstream but rather they themselves develop complex in themselves that they are enough capable and they have got admission into IIT because of reservation only. But this is not true. Everyone is equally capable of doing anything if they are provided with opportunities. And this opportunity can not be provided by means of reservation but by economic uplift.
It is being argued that most of the backward classes are poor but this is not true. The argument said is completely based on 60 year old data which says “Using 11 criteria , the Commission identified 3,743 caste groups as OBCs. Since population figures along caste lines were not available beyond 1931, the Commission used the 1931 census data to calculate the number of OBCs. The population of Hindu and non-Hindu OBCs worked out to about 52 per cent of the total population.” (Data gathered by Rashmi bansal in her blog YouthCurry).

One my my friend gave a very good idea which I think is decent enough. If you really want to give reservation then include on more policy that only one generation will be given reservation. Any generation after that generation should not be eligible for reservations. Sounds good?

There is one more aspect of reservation brain drain as pointed on in editorial of ‘Times of India’. Students will tend to go abroad for higher studies if not USA then at least Europian or Asian universities. If student can take loan to study in IITs/IIMs then they can also afford to study at these colleges also. The view in the editorial was that in today’s world of Globalization it is good for India because ultimately wherever they go they will be ‘Indian’. I don’t agree with this argument. They will be Indian but when it comes for qualification they will be not be called alumnus of any Indian college but of some foreign college and it does matter. This will show that our education system is not good and due to which intelligent students are going abroad and making their mark. Yes that’s true. If equal opportunity of study will not provided there will be many eligible students who will not be able to get admission to IITs and IIMs.

Why don’t you let it be a fair competition where every one has equal probability to win? Do some thing at foundation level, like providing free education at primary & secondary level to poor class, so that they can be equally competitive.

Romance with Google

Filed under: Posts from old blog — Pradeep Mishra @ 7:15 am
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Posted in on Apr 13, 2006 at 4:16 AM

Now google is getting romantic.surprised!! Yeah that’s true..Google added a new feather to its cap called Google Romance(For more information see Press Release . Younger guys or rather I should say single guys must be very happy after this. Google can now find out your soulmate infact can ‘search’ best fit for. I don’t know what lead to romance because Orkut is already there to spread love though principle interest might not be so but this is the way it is being used by ‘singles’.May be google is trying to generate more revenue by its contextual ads with reference to ‘young emotions’ because I don’t think any kind of ad program is associated with orkut

Here comes Gr@vee

Filed under: Posts from old blog — Pradeep Mishra @ 7:14 am
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Posted on Apr 13, 2006 at 4:17 AM

Gr@vee is not a new kid on the search block but I noticed this today itself while browsing some URLs. The kid was borned on 19th Dec 2005,see this. Huh so what’s so new with it. Well there have been a great crowed of search engines from google, msn, yahoo, amazon to metasearch engines like copernic, jx2 etc. What it does it, combines the result from many prominent search engines and then it applies its own algorithm( called as tag relevent alogrithm)to further refine the result.
Let’s first understand what do we mean by tag relevent alogrithm. What graveed does it, it allows you to create your bookmarks and tag them just like popular bookmark service del.icio.us. Now search result received from the engines are filtered applying alogorithm which gets results based on search keyword used as tags.A user can also vote for useful tag.Ofcourse there is a revenue generating ad program also called AdShare (sounds similar to adsense). Gravee says about its adshare program.
Search advertising is an $8+ billion industry, which is effectively built on the backs of the content owners. The Gravee.com AdShare program fundamentally changes the economic model for search. Instead of just our search engine enjoying all the profit from advertising (which, incidentally, is made possible by the existence of natural search results in the first place), Gravee.com shares keyword advertising revenue with 1) natural search results that appeared on the same page and 2) affiliates who drive any search traffic that is monetized.We view ourselves as much as a distributor of content as we do a search engine. Search advertising is content driven. It’s an economy of attention – i.e. one could posit that the content showing up most frequently in search results is driving the most ad revenue. As a result, our economic model is so, as well – meaning, whatever content gets more attention (i.e. shows up in more searches) will get paid more.
Gravee is also about shifting the power from content “distributors” (read: search engines) to “authors” (read: content owners).
(to read more please see Gr@vee Blog.

To me idea appeals very much and till now I am convinced with search results too however results are a bit slow which are likely to be. FYI Recently they have added blog search as well.All the very best Gr@vee

Orian Search

Filed under: Posts from old blog — Pradeep Mishra @ 2:03 am

Posted in on Apr 13, 2006 at 4:18 AM

Search search every where it’s search…A revolutionary way of searching was unveiled in september( read here but today the news is hot because Google has come into the picture. An israeli newspaper broke the news on Apr9, 2006 that Google has acquired a search algorithm developed by an israeli student of New south wales australia. And no doubt Microsoft and Yahoo were also contacted NSW but when it comes to search Google can’t compromise being #1. Sources said that Google paid a good amount to acquire the algorithm.
“Bill Gates was recently quoted in Forbes magazine as saying that we need to take the search way beyond how people think of it today.Earlier Gravee, Webaaroo and now Orian are new faces of search.
Ori Allen is a 26 year old Phd student of NSW university who developed this algorithm under guidance of Dr Eric Martin. “I provided the spark. But it is Ori who has developed this through his amazing creativity and sheer hard work over these past months,” said Mr Martin.
A lot has been seen but seems there are more curtain to be raised.
Sources:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/04/11/1144521270227.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/formula-for-a-fortune/2006/04/10/1144521239582.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/search-me-mate/2006/01/23/1137864837376.html?page=2
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/703798.html

Webaroo

Filed under: Posts from old blog — Pradeep Mishra @ 2:02 am
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Posted on Apr 13, 2006 at 12:01 PM

What!! am I going to talk about some kangaroo familiy species. No it the latest buzz in the search market. The company ‘Webarroo’ recently launched its search product by the name ‘Webaroo’ only . It doesn’t provide you the regular online search but you can search any thing while you are disconnected from the internet. Hmm is there some magic. Webaroo defines a concept called webpacks. So when you are connected with the internet you can download the webpack of your interest like ‘World News’, ‘Mumbai’ etc. Now next time when you connect to net you can sync up these webpack with the webaroo server (manually or automatically). But remember initially you need to download a large file (~250MB).
Well I don’t think it sounds much attractive except for the people who travel a lot. But this idea clearly excites that people are thinking about new and innovative modes of search as I mentioned in my last article as well. The product is still in beta phase so you can’t find much webpacks. I haven’t tried the product (I downloaded the client but looking at the webpack download size I kept it aside). Let’s see what is next search.

Google Calender (Just moved my old blog in here)

Filed under: Posts from old blog — Pradeep Mishra @ 12:03 am
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Go(oggle)Calendar


Today google launched new service called Google calendar. Like all its services this service is also quite rich and user friendly.
so Apart from search, to an individual, google offers Gmail (An email service), Gtalk (Messenger service),Google Page (Create your webpage),Google News(Read news), Blog(Your Weblog log), Orkut(Your social network) and now Google Calendar. Can you see come connectivity between the product. Google don’t want to let you go anywhere else for you most of the daily on net activities. And that’s perhaps is the long term plan of Google. Google’s product manager Carl Sjogereen says the new Google Calendar service fitted the company’s mission to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, since it would make it easier for users to organise and access their personal diary information from any computer. Gmail is the main integration point for now, but you can imagine integration with a number of other Google properties”. This is very clear from the integration of Gtalk with Gmail. Can you smell next big thing..Yes you are right it should be something like Google office. Sun Microsystems and Google has already agreed to promote OpenOffice Microsoft is also trying hard to give something like this and you can see the ambitious live projects.
To get started with calendar and complete feature set visit Go(oogle)Calendar

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