I have been advertising my website to my friends and family. Most potent advertising tool (to my dismay) were the photos. People viewed photos a lot. Some of the other friends looked at other content only, but no feedback. No feedback or comments kills enthusiasm. But I push on.

A couple of my friends who saw my site and who gave me feedback said that my website was "very interesting". What does that really mean. To me it means, "It is a crappy or boring site with no content of any value. But I don't want to hurt your feelings because you are my friend". That's what an open ended and non-committal adjective "very interesting" means to me.

C'mon guys, if you don't like the site, tell me. I can take it. And if you really like my site and think it is "interesting", let me know what part interests you so that I can cater more content in that area.

Just "very interesting" doesn't interest me at all. Totally.

Sheesh!!! I knew it was too good to last, but still you expect some decency from the dynamic DNS providers. You see, I am using the free DDNS service from ZoneEdit. Supposedly, they are one of the best providers and most reliable. And so far I have had no issues with the service I got. I am hosting my website at my home using DSL. My ISP blocks port 80 (as do most of them out there) and I have not way but use web-forwarding service. The other option is to make my site visitors put in the ugly www.dharwadkar.com:port_no to visit my site. I could do that but it reduces the effectiveness of the website.

But suddenly from today, my website started popping up ads which I never intended to. I first thought that this is because of the Google Ads and banners I put in over the weekend, but then it doesn't make sense. So many (almost all) websites have Ads by Google or Yahoo. So why does it have to be only my site. So I started out on a hunt to find out why this is happening and the results astonished me. It seems that ZoneEdit has been bought out by Dotster (www.dotster.com) and it is their (Dotster's) policy to display pop-up ads for free accounts. Here's an official email. This really sucks.

They should have at least the decency to tell their customers (whether free or paid) that there is a change in service and give option to opt out. I am moving from ZoneEdit. Even if I have to pay for this service somewhere else, I will do it. But I will not stand this underhand / shady deals.

According to this report on Bloomberg, Microsoft, Oracle and Intel is pressurising the US government to raise the H1-B visa cap to 115000, almost double to the existing cap (current cap is 65000). Microsoft says that otherwise it may be forced to move more jobs abroad as it finds difficulty in attracting and retaining talent. As per Jack Krumholtz (Managing director for Federal Affairs for Microsoft, Microsoft has a couple of thousands positions for which it cannot find the right people and if the situation persists, Microsoft may be forced to do more of their development abroad.

Bill Gates, Cheif Software Architect of Microsoft recently said while in Washington DC that by limiting the number of technical professional work can come into US for work, US would pose a serious threat to US competitiveness with more and more number of competitive technical education institution of higher caliber appearing in India and China.

Not long ago I read an article on the same lines which essentially compared the US steel and automobile industry in wake of increased inflow of IT professionals. Industry experts and analysts felt that by protecting the industry from outside competition, the government is infact making it prone to failure similar to the steel industry in US. Whereas foreign competition in the automobile market made it stronger and stronger and brought it to a place where it is now.

With the third world countries like India rising up meteorically to a dominant position in technology industry, it might serve well for US to lift the cap on the number of H1 visas.

I got a message on Orkut today which talked about the recent proposal by Government of India to introduce reservations in premier institutes in India for backward classes bringing the total reservations up to 49.5% of total available seats. The message also gave a link to an online petition and urged all to go there and sign the petition electronically. I read the petition made out to the HRD ministry and signed it. I feel happy that I did and made my opinion known. Whether this petition will change anything remains to be seen. But the good thing is, awareness is increasing. I sent it to all my friends.

India is independent country for 59 years now and I seriously think that reservations have outlived teir usefulness. In fact the person who proposed reservations, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar wanted them only for 10 years. But the politicians thought otherwise and did not want to upset their vote banks by being the one to make hard decisions. The logic behind Dr. Ambedkar's requirement is very simple to understand. If you cannot make progress in 10 years, then you have not chance of making progress at all. The reservations were meant to give a launchpad for the downtrodden people not as a benefit. Instead of cutting back the reservations, it is increasing.

I strongly feel that India cannot make progress by continuing with the policy of maintaining reservations for the "backward" classes. Come on folks. It's been long enough. Enough of this nonsense. There have been some innovative ideas from people about how to provide a launchpad to the true backward classes.

There is a concept of a coupon. Every person who meets (or fails to meet) certain minimum criteria regardless of religion, caste or creed is given that. This coupon can only be used once in the person's lifetime and cannot be transferred to anyone else. The person can then decide to use this coupon at anytime that he needs assistance. Be it admission to some college, university or for a job. But once he uses it, it gone. He cannot use it again.

This seemed to me to be a very sound idea. This idea came from one of the bloggers from Mysore, Kamal Tripathi. Kamal actualy calls it as a Lottery system. But as I wrote in a comment there, I would rather not call it lottery but just a coupon system. After all the person is not gambling but is making an informed decision.

Let's try to implement it.

So I watched the movie today. The Da Vinci Code that is. Before even it was released. In a theatre. Free of charge but authorised. Courtesy: Symantec.

It so happened that I got an invitation from Symantec for a information security related presentation. The theme was "Protect your secrets". Essentially it was a sales presentation but it was very interesting. It broadened my concept of what is messaging. Conventionally messaging only meant email to me. But the new methods are getting included, monitored and archived very fast. These include: Instant messaging IM, collaborative software (MS Sharepoint, e-rooms, Lotus Notes Team Room etc). I guess we should add another one to the list. Scraps on Orkut. Though Orkut currently is purely personal it won't be long when people start making use of it for business reasons. After all it is somewhat similar to collaboration.

Now about the movie. If you liked the book, then you definitely will like the movie. If not for the plot, then only for Tom Hanks. He plays Professor Robert Langdon to perfection. Of course the movie has omitted some parts of the book but nothing that is detrimental to the overall plot. Overall rating: Fascinating. Should be a blockbuster as predicted.

Dubbed by some people as the (20 years old??) father of Indian hacking, I first heard about him a couple of years back when my wife told me about him. It seems that he was quite a sensation (and still is) and my brother in law who is a senior law enforcement official with a computer engineering degree referred his book. I was skeptic, in part because the guy was so young. I again came across Ankit in a community of Orkut.

Apparently Ankit is quite talented in the ways of computer and hacking and has very good skills. But it was hugely disappointing to read more about him. I read his interview dated 18-Apr-2002 in which he talks about his interest in computer hacking, his book, his website (surprisingly not online anymore??) and his plans.

Like any 16 year old kid he wanted to go abroad (read the US) for higher education (I won't blame him given the state of higher education in India). But what was highly disappointing was that his ambition was to work with FBI directly. Why this fascination with US agencies? Why not some Indian agencies and help the Indian government fight terrorism (which is plenty in India) and make India a better place? Or simply apply his technical knowledge and worldwide recognition to improve the Indian IT infrastructure by serving as special advisor to the IT ministry, for example.

Why is it that all the highly talented people (save for some exemptions) from the middle class background want to get out of India as soon as they can and want to have nothing to do with India? What's the charisma? I fail to understand.

I might be asked the question then what am I doing in the US? Firstly I am not as talented / famous as these guys. Secondly I am carving my own career and shaping up to setup my own company. Once I am ready I am going back. Thirdly my employer wants me to be in US at client place (Afterall we all work and do things to ensure we have enough food, clothes and a decent place to stay for ourselves and our families).

I wondered how long would it take to come. When I got hooked on to Orkut and surfed around it, I saw people proudly putting up nice pictures of themselves, their friends and loved ones on Orkut. Having known and experience the notoriety of Internet criminals who would misuse such pictures and personal information, I wondered...

Last night my cousin emailed to all his contacts about this. Especially to the girls as their photographs are the ones that are most likely to be abused. This may well be a rumour, but this is a rumour no sane person would ignore. Here is what he wrote:

"Improtant note for girls
Hi How are u All
GIRLS BEWARE PLEASE..IT IS SERIOUS! HELP URSELF
It has recently been found out that there are some spammers present on Orkut who download the Photographs of Girls from their Profile and they get 5 cent per photograph. This photographs are later sent into Image Editors like Photoshop where they are morphed and superimposed on the images of Porn Stars.

These people are so expert in this field that the photographs looks completely real and anyone can get decieved by generated images.

These photographs are then used for multiple purposes like Printing in International Magzines, Uploading on paid Porn Sites and sometimes even blakmailing. And the post consequences are a known fact. So after knowing about this fact my advice to all sisters of my brothers here to please remove their photo's from Orkut and don't give the culprits a chance to do play around with You. Afterall Prevention is better than Cure"

I have not edited the message other than some small punctuation changes and adding italics. Does every good thing has to have a darker side? I thought Orkut was cool and people were able to get in touch with each other so easily, look at each other progress through the years through pictures and even plan to meet. Is there a way to stop this menace before it gets out of hand? I think together we can. I have seen some websites, where you cannot download images. We should all talk to Orkut management about it and have them disable the photo download ability and then they can track who downloads the pictures. Well, I as a legitimate user do not require to copy the pictures. I can simply ask my friends to send me the copies of the pictures over email.

I plan to write to Orkut about it. Join me if you are interested.

Although this post does not really fit into any categories, I could not help myself but to write about it. I have worked for Phiilps for four years. In fact Philips was my first employer and it holds a special place in my heart. True to that, I generally make it a point to buy Philips products whenever I can and it makes sense. So we bought a Philips 27" TV last year and within 15 days, POOF!!! It blew up. I don't know what happened, but it just stopped working. I took it back to the store and replaced it with, well another Philips TV.

It was working well till now. I guess it was waiting till the labour warranty got over. As soon as it sensed that 6 months are over, it just died again one night. I called Philips service and they directed me to an Authorised service center. They charged $59 for a house call and told me that they will give labour estimate sometime later. I was scared and I called Philips arguing that since my TV had gone bad twice in 6 months, they ought to waive the labour charges as well. Graciously they agreed.

But it has been 3 weeks since my TV is out and there is no outlook as to when it will be repaired and returned to me. I am following up regularly. After so much of follow-up and waiting, I decided to call and ask for a replacement. I was not prepared for the kind of treatment I got and nothing could have prepared me for that. Without going in to specifics, I was told to wait indefinitely till the TV is repaired or the service center declared it irreparable after which Philips will decide what to do. I tried to argue that they cannot go on researching my problem forever on my time (The service center has not yet found the fault) when I am ending up paying the cable bill for nothing. In effect I was told that I was a sucker to buy Philips product and I am stuck with me. We thought of forgetting about the TV and buying a new one. But shelling out another $200 is something I cannot afford at my situation.

I wrote a letter (without keeping any hopes of any response) to CEO of Philips Electronics USA. That was two days back. I have not even got an acknowledgement of the email. The email I wrote is as below:

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Dear Mr. Zeven,

I regret intruding in your mailbox for such reason, but I had a totally harrowing experience with one of your customer service centers today while following up and requesting support on my outstanding repair request for my TV.

Brief background: My TV broke down suddenly and I requested the authorised service center to take a look & repair it. It was for the second time in about six months that my TV had broken down (I purchased the TV sometime in November 2005). I requested that since the TV has broken down twice in such a short period of time, that the labour charge should be waived and I was happy to know that Philips graciously accepted my request.

It has been more than 3 weeks now that my TV is out for repair. The authorised service center tried to fix it once, but it did not was correct totally and then he took it back. In his words, "The meters are showing that something is wrong, but we can't figure it out." Today I called the Service center and requested them, what seems reasonable to me, to replace the TV as it is taking way too long to repair it. Not only was I met with resistance and reluctance, I was quoted a string of policies which they said prevented them from complying to my request. Their demeanour was just short of hostile. I was told to wait till the time somebody decides that the TV is irreparable, even if it takes forever. They did not say it explicitly, but that's what they meant.

Without taking any names (I am sure they were just doing their jobs), I would like to request you to see what you can do in my case. My reference number with Philips service center is 3387C. The model number of my TV is 27PT5445/37 and the serial number is YA1A0535037349

Just to add a piece of trivia, I have worked for Philips for the first 4 years of my professional life and have seen how things work from the inside.

Although not really hopeful that this email will elicit any favourable response, I am writing to you just to let you know that such practices do not inspire consumer confidence, and at times when the market is open to competition and better quality of products and service.

Best regards,
Mukul Dharwadkar

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I am still waiting for response from Philips. But one thing is guaranteed. I am never buying a Philips product again and will tell my friends and families as well.