sandipb.net

In a swooping country wide move, the HRD ministry has removed the directors of 11 NITs (previously named RECs) across the country citing an irregular process of appointment by the previous government. The present HRD ministry under Mr. Arjun Singh calls this a detoxification drive against the misdeeds of the previous government whose HRD ministry was led by Mr. Murli Manohar Joshi. As a fallout of this action, the director of my alma-mater REC Jalandhar (now named NIT Jalandhar), Dr.

I have frequently felt moments of disorientation when certain characters of TV (mostly Americans) pronounce o-f-t-e-n with a audible ’t’. Digging around a bit, I found an interesting bit of trivia at dictionary.com. The definition of ‘often’ mentions: During the 15th century English experienced a widespread loss of certain consonant sounds within consonant clusters, as the (d) in handsome and handkerchief, the (p) in consumption and raspberry, and the (t) in chestnut and often.

A Bengali restaurant in New York experimented with a new concept - pay-as-you-like. You eat, and then you pay as much as you think that the food is worth. After causing serious conscience-related trauma in patrons, they finally had to put prices in the menu. Link to article. (via TriNetre - The Third Eye)

I credit Isaac Asimov for my long-time fascination with the genre of science-fiction. Asimov (mostly) and Arthur C. Clarke were mostly what I read at the end of my school days. I was browsing through Wikipedia today and caught a recent feature by them on Asimov. The wikipedia entry on Asimov was fascinating - there were so many facts about him that I didn’t know. So I decided to create a short self-reference of facts that I would like to remember of this great man.

First they made sure that medicines cost the earth. Then they made sure that you need insurance before you can get health benefits. Then they made sure that you are completely surrounded - rocket high medical bills and insurance not enough to cover it. And now they are making sure that when you get bankrupted, it is impossible to get bankruptcy protection. Hmm .. social security? http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0310-22.htm U.S. senators are about to pass a bankruptcy bill so hostile to ordinary American families that it could only have come about in a place as corrupt, cynical and unmoored from reality as Washington, D.

Some months back, the lug-delhi.org HallOfShame was written about in an article at Techtree. The article also features a short tele-interview that I had with the author. Link to article. I have, for the time being, suspended any additions by me to the hallofshame list. I have some plans for the future for this drive which I intend to pursue shortly.

Since my bad experience with Sify, I have been looking around for other similar complaints against Sify. It turns out that they have been running a country-wide racket. Ankur Raheja has filed a case against Sify broadband for losses due to downtime and misleading claims in their advertisements. Take a look at the comments on that page - Chandigarh, Chennai, Bangalore… every city has a problem with Sify. (Thanks to Puneet for the link)

Here is the letter I sent to Sify contact points in Delhi yesterday. It chronicles my Sify broadband experience here in Delhi. From: Sandip Bhattacharya To: Sanjay Bhandari , Puneet Sharma , anamika Cc: India Gii Subject: Official complaint - My sify experience and a request for refund Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 14:21:23 +0530 Mailer: Evolution 2.0.2 (2.0.2-3) I had applied for a sify connection exactly a week ago, and paid a cheque on the same day.

Inspite of my contempt for their loathsome Internet fleecing plans, I had to reluctantly sign up for a Sify cable internet plan today. Cost me a neat pile for installation and pre-payment for one month. The most painful part of this transition is going back to a NAT-ted private IP. This means no more gnomemeeting, no more yahoo voice/video chat, no more Bittorrent, no more gnutella/fasttrack/openft and other P2P networks, no more logging into my home machine when stranded outside my home office to retrieve a document I left at home.