Reading List

Presently reading:

1. Einsten: His life and Universe By Walter Isaacsan
2. Andy Grove: The life and times of an american By Richard S. Tedlow
3. The origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the radical remaking of economics by Eric D. Beinshorker
4. Guns & Germs and Steel: By Jarad Diamond
   

Presently Books lying on my table/bookshelf, awaiting for me to finish them.

1. Wall Street: By Steve Fraser
2. Ten rules for strategic Innovations: By Govindarajan & Trimble
3. The god Delusion: By Richard Dawkins
4. The future of freedom: Fareed Zakarid
5. The Insider: P.V. Narasimha Rao
6. The Naked Leader: By David Taylor
7. The speed of trust: By Stephen M.R. Covey

All is not gloom. I have completed reading harry potter and many other books recently. The list of books completed in 2007 is yet to be prepared. Maybe next post!

Web 2.0 explained

Harry Harry Harry!!! What have you done?

Harry Potter has been in the news for a couple of reasons during the last 2 days. One is the new play he is performing in london theatre, where we see a grown up guy "Naked". Most parents wont not want to associate the actor and book together anymore. So much for creative freedom.

And ofcourse, the second reason is that the new book in the series of Harry Potter is releasing.

Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows by J.K. Rowling, the seventh and final book in the best-selling
series, has been scheduled for release at 12:01 a.m. on July 21, 2007, it
was announced today by Scholastic, the global children's publishing,
education and media company.

Let's Q up!! Here we come Borders!!

Arab nominated for Holocaust honor

I am sure there is more people like him nowadays. It is just that we are not searching for them.

Interesting

Americans on Hajj

A Rose by any other name is still a Rose!

Or It should be "Rose from any country is still a Rose" . Gone are the days when Dutch farmers used to rule the flower market of the world, they are now facing increasing competition both in terms of logistics center as well as producers of flowers.

Dubai has plans to make itself a commerical center for flower trade, allocating land and resources for the same. The producer of the world, china is also taking a strong look into the flower power to sustain rural growth.

Yahoo! Mail Beta

Yahoo has recently launched Yahoo! Beta, which features a Outlook-type interface. The interface is the second face-lift in the recent years, after Gmail gave tough compitetion to free email service. The advent of "free email" was started by hotmail, however, is now solely in the hands of yahoo and google.

You can find screenshots of the new Yahoo!Beta here. I was given a option to try the beta version, however, could not even login-in to the system. After all, it is still Beta!

Graphical Representation of this blog (and the net)

Thanks to M and J and this site, here it is:



and here is the representation of the entire web in graphical form as of 15th Jan 2005:



The project is called opte, and you can find more information on the project and other cool images here.

Why is living in dubai so bad?

This is in reference to a post by Gautam. I have tried to think of reasons why people are more materialistic in this part of the world, especially in dubai. I can come up with the following reasons:

1. Divided society among various nationalities and religions. Some of the best friends were Arabs when I stayed in united states, however, I am ashamed to say I know nobody here.
2. Ever-bickering intra-communities. The kind of "keeping up with the Jones" among various communities is taken to an extreme here.
   

Also, historically, people came to the gulf to make money, leaving their families at home.

The other side of the coin is to look at it in terms of economics. The amount of disposable income proportional to your earnings was historically (not at present) high. The avenues for spending money or investments are limited since you cannot make the most important expenditure, i.e, your house. You got to spend money, thus, the high level of "Bling" in dubai.

How would you rectify it?

1. Allow people to invest in this society. People care about their investments; society will improve itself.
   
2. Encourage social connections between various people. The areas of dubai are divided into ethnic groups, with few or no exceptions. The idea of encouraging high-rise buildings in Abu Dhabi, I believe, was to control populations in case of a uprising due to any reason. This thought is out-dated and needs to be corrected. The recent problems in France is only but an indication of what is to come.
   
3. Most importantly, improve educational institutions including universities. Students merge among other communities with little or no pre-conceived notions and good educational experiences will lead to better dubai-community.
   

When is security too much to pay?

This is in relation to the diverting of a plane flying from london to washington d.c which was divered to boston for emergency landing. For those who do not know the story, you can find the same here.

I might be out on a limb here but what are the chances of an 60 year old women fusing about some cream - she was not allowed to take on the flight- a security risk? I mean, please I would take all the chances in the world in that sitution. I understand that the threat level is high and chances of a western target being attacked are quite high, but do 6o year old women who most lively lived here whole life in western countries want to detonate something? I would be suprised if she succeeded in hitting somebody with her walking stick.

Regardless of what the people think, terrorists are not crazy by birth. Rational thought and process is behind every action. It is, however, the assumptions that are to be blamed. In the movie "K-PAX", one of the scences shows a "crazy" man trys to hide under benches and avoiding sunlight. It is revealed that he believes sun rays will kill him, so he avoids them. His hiding behind benches is only the reaction.His thinking is not irrational, his assumptions are what is the problem to be resolved.

Similar is the case against the terrorists. They are not irrational human beings, they have come to believe in assumptions which you and i dont believe to be true. Any problem in this world can be solved if both sides can try to understand the assumptions and the reasons behind the assumptions that make up the conflict. Destroying cities, towers and subways will not change the assumptions. Open minded constructive critical thinking will.

Burj Dubai Facts and Figures

Listed below are facts and figures relating to Burj Dubai as per Emaar Magazine.

1. Upon completion, the Burj Dubai will be the world's tallest building as well as the world's tallest man-made structure. (more here on present tallest man-made structure)
2. The Burj Dubai spire will be visible from as far away as 95 kms.
   
3. At 5,500 kg capacity, the firemen/service elevator will be the world's tallest service elevator.
   
4. First mega-rise to have elevators with specially programmed, permit-controlled evacuation procedures. (I wonder how they work? Weren't we supposed Not to use evaluators in case of an emergency)
5. Highest publicly accessible observation tower at 442 meters. ( Go up and watch miles and miles of desert as well as ocean I guess!)
6. The curtain wall of Burj Dubai will be equivalent to 17 football fields.
   
7. The total glass requirement is 142K sq/m
8. Total concrete used is equivalent to 1900km sidewalk and weighs the equivalent to 100,000 elephants.
   
9. There will be 200 meters of "dancing" fountains at the foot of Burj Dubai.
   

And for the environmentally inclined person:

1. Power requirement is 36 KVA is equivalent of 36K lights bulbs of 100 watts each operating at the same time.
2. The cooling requirement is 10K tonnes of melting ice every day.
   
3. 15 Million gallons of supplemental water are collected and drained every day

And lastly, 33,236 Men in Blue work at the site on a regular basis.

Dubai's Banking Sector in the world news!

With 47 Banking and many more financial institutes, the financial sector is highly competitive in UAE. Considering that they operate with little or no regulatory framework applied on their customers, UAE banking has developed its own flavor. Financial statements are re-organized for internal assessments of credit analysis. This is due to the fact that most companies do not show Positive Net Income, with all the Operating Income paid to the management/Directors as management fees. And this is only one example of financial manipulation that occurs here.

But this is set to change. Among the proposals in the pipeline is a Valued Added Tax and allowing businesses to have 100% ownership of companies outside the freezone areas. (compared to 51% - 49% ownership structure at present) All these regulations will help UAE to develop their financial sector.

Yahoo News has a related news article.

Lessons Dubai Can Learn

In a country where car-pooling is not encouraged, and atleast car-lifts are discouraged, washington DC shows the way in more ways than one.

Love This!

If there is ever a reason why dubai would fail as a modern, forword-looking city along with the great visions of its leaders, it is due to the backward looking pressures from certain sections of the society.

That said, etisalat is providing servies in censorship that is needed to limit the shock effect on large section of the conservative society. Given a choice between having large section of the population surfing the net with censorship or having parents ban internet in their homes due to lack of blockage of inproper sites, i would prefer the earlier. I have noticed societies in the middle east *tend* to take extreme measures in most aspects. (Please feel to correct me if i am wrong!).

What is needed is a proxy-free internet for people who need it. Maybe something like the liqour license the govenment has. I know this is a money making idea, but money is what moves the organizations here. Atleast that would be a good start.

Now as for the reasons behind the proxy, that issue is a debate on its own merits.

The title says it all!

Do Skyscrapers make sense?

Not always, so says the economist according to this article. Most skyscrapers, specially the really big ones, are ready long after the demand slows down for the office space. So does that mean dubai's economy will be slowing down considerably after 2009 ( By which time almost all planned skyscrapers will be built)?

Yahoo! 360 Blocked

Finally, it happened! After blocking various blogging and networking sites, now Yahoo! 360, one of the newer products of Yahoo has been blocked by our own ISP. Is Blooger Next? ( Owned by Google)
UPDATE: Looks like Yahoo! 360 is back!.. I should have taken a screen shot :-)

Software Wars

Microsoft and it's battles to maintain its world dominance is always a on-going struggle. As you can see the above graphic!

UAE Year Book 2005

The New UAE Year Book for 2005 has been released. This document contains the latest govenment information including statistics and demographics of UAE. The book is published by govenment of dubai i believe.

Re-designed Trump Tower

I recently came to know about the re-design of new Trump Building coming up as the center piece of plam jumairh. Although I believe no financial investment is being contributed by Mr. Trump, he would lend his name as well as his expertise in the new project. Notice the plam metro going through the new building.