Indian Railways is making a lot of money in profits (Over 25,000 crore rupees last year). Now the question is what is done with this money? Unfortunately as far as basic infrastructure is concerned, nothing much is done.  In fact, travelling by any of the general compartments will be a “lesson in torture”! What is more infuriating is the fact that they are spending huge amounts in gigantic plasma and lcd displays. To majority of commuters these are useless because many of the displays are used for advertising and the ones which displays train timings are almost always incorrect!

Last week I was travelling from Trivandrum to Trichur and the waiting room in Trivandrum railway station had a huge HDTV display supposed to show train timings. Someone in railways had downloaded something nasty on the Windows machine which powers the display and is infected with Brontok virus.

This display is located in a “luxury waiting room”(??) which is air conditioned and charges Rs. 10 per passenger for 2 hours. Even if you have a first class train ticket which costs more than first class flight ticket(!) you need to pay Rs. 10

Talking about basic infrastructure, the trivandrum railway station is the “most advanced” station in kerala and is supposed to be at “international level” but doesn’t have enough chairs in platforms for passenger to sit.

I guess what they mean by international is either “pakistan” or “somalia”.

This one is funny, especially if you have used Windows 95

Today is my lucky day. I just won the Europe national lottery for one million euros. Here is the mail I got,

Sir/Madam,

CONGRATULATIONS: YOU WON 1,000,000.00.

We are pleased to inform you of the result of Europe National Lottery which was held on the 15th, March 2007. Your e-mail address attached
to e-ticket number: 834509819, with Prize Number: 237359446 drew a prize of 1,000,000.00 (One Million Euros).

This lucky draw came first in the 2nd Category of the Sweepstake. You will receive the sum of 1,000,000.00 (One Million Euros) from
our authorized bank.Because of some mix-up with sweepstake prizes, including the time limited placed on the payment of your prize: 1,000,000.00,
we advice that you keep all information about this prize confidential until your funds: 1,000,000.00 have been transferred to you by our bank.

You must adhere to this instruction, strictly, to avoid any delay with the release of your funds to your person. This program has
been abused severally in past, so we are doing our best to forestall further occurrence of false claims. This sweepstake was conducted
under the watchful eyes of 8,000 spectators. Your e-mail address was selected and came out first by a e-ballot draw from over
250,000 e-mail addresses (personal and corporate e-mail addresses).

This program is sponsored by CFI Networks to compensate faithful internet suffers around the globe. Congratulations for becoming
one of the few lucky winners.With your permission, your e-mail will also be included in the next sweepstake of 5Million.

You must claim your prize: 1,000,000.00 not later than 14-days from the moment you receive this e-mail.
In order to avoid unnecessary delays with your claim from the bank. please contact them immediately,
and quote your winning and personal information to the Bank in all your correspondence with the paying bank.

<< contact information deleted >>

Congratulations.
Angelic Van Theiry.(Mrs)
Coordinator.Europe Million Lottery Internation

But I still don’t understand why the mail is addressed to “undisclosed-recipients”.

Jokes apart, these things are increasingly becoming dangerous. I have got “genuine looking” mails from ICICI, HDFC and Paypal asking for complete details including ATM pin, internet user id et. The “from id” is forged and the URL text looks genuine. The fake site URL also is very similar and they copy the exact branding! What is more problematic is that they even bypass gmail’s spam protection.

I got this as an email forward. Pretty interesting!

World’s easiest quiz (in order to pass you just need four correct answers)

Please answer all questions before scrolling down for the answers.

1) How long did the Hundred Years’ War last?

2) Which country makes Panama hats?

3) From which animal do we get catgut?

4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?

5) What is a camel’s hair brush made of?

6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?

7) What was King George VI’s first name?

8 ) What color is a purple finch?

9) Where are Chinese Gooseberries from?

10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?

Now here are the correct answers,

1) How long did the Hundred Years War last?   116 years

2) Which country makes Panama hats?  Ecuador

3) From which animal do we get cat gut? Sheep and Horses

4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?   November

5) What is a camel’s hair brush made of? Squirrel fur

6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?   Dogs

7) What was King George VI’s first name?   Albert

8 ) What color is a purple finch?   Crimson

9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?   New Zealand

10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane? Orange, of course

Here is a cartoon which illustrates teamwork. No wonder about the saying, “a picture is worth 1000 words”! I got this as an email forward.

Last week I visited an electrical shop to buy a new table fan. While at the cash counter, I noticed a rather unique credit policy written in big red letters and placed on top of the computer at the counter. It said - “credit will only be given to people over 85 years of age“. I wondered if there is somebody over 85 in my family whom I can bring to the shop. But then I noticed the fine print!

In case you can’t read it - It says “only if accompanied by both parents!”.

This site is hosted on Dreamhost - the so called “employee owned” hosting company. Dreamhost hosting is cheap and their customer service is pretty good.  But lately they seem to having real problems with the infrastructure. Today they had the ultimate problem - all DNS servers were down for over 5 hours! It is pretty funny that a company which hosts 400,000 websites cannot keep their DNS server up!

Now the real fun is on the dreamhoststatus.com site. This is a blog by Dreamhost which tracks the problem affecting their services. Whenever something major happens with Dreamhost, you see a pattern of response from the customers. It is very predictable and at the same time very funny as well!

John : help! All my servers are down! I am loosing all my customers. Why is this happening every day?

Anna: It is funny that this problem is rated as medium. Do you call an issue critical when the data centre is bombed?

John’s Mom: Shut the f* up John. You are on a shared server and it is damn cheap. Be happy with whatever crap you get.

Chris: I am happy with DH. Please fix the problem whenever you have time.

Lis : I am devastated. Today I got the biggest business and my client says the site is down.

Dreamhost fan: Hey Anna, your site is up. Where are you from? Looking for a date?

DH Guru : for (int i=0;i<400,000;i++) {nslookup i; print result;}. It seems still some sites are down. Maybe we all should go for advanced custom DNS solutions.

Mike: Hey check out Lunarpages. They have some good schemes and they might even kick some DH ass. I also recommend registerfly.

Susan : You all are gay.

Now the above conversation is almost identical whenever Dreamhost posts a problem. Names and the words used may change sometimes

I don’t claim to be a big expert on English, but still there are a couple of English grammer tidbits you can learn from me.

Being a software engineer automatically means that you are considered an expert in all fields. So yesterday my cousin asked me a question on english grammer. He asked,

“How do I change the following sentence to passive voice?”

I made a mistake

It was long time since I tackled such a difficult English grammer question. After thinking deeply for 5 minutes, I replied:

I was made by a mistake

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soapbox, which happened in one of Japan’s biggest cosmetics companies.

The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soapbox that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soapbox went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem.

Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soapboxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt,they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent a whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc., but instead came out with another solution.

He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soapbox passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Moral : Always look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problems.

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac”
-  George Carlin

To me this was a real eye opener!

I stay in Kerala, southern state of India. Kerala is unique in many respects. I won’t go into details but in short, day to day life here is a challenge!

Today I came back from work early since I was not feeling well. Summer is at its peak and there was no electricity when I came home. My father told me that power was down from morning. I called electricity office to check on the status. Here is the conversation,

Me: Hello
Electricity office guy: Hello, electricity office

Me: We don’t have power in area “xyz”
Electricity office guy: We have switched off electricity in the entire “abc” area

Me: Why? What happened?
Electricity office guy: We are painting the transformer

Me: eh? painting? oh! When will it be over?
Electricity office guy: No idea, probably by evening

As you can guess, power came back after 12 hours of painting! You can imagine how challenging it is to run a business around here

Ever wondered how many people are linking to localhost files from their websites or blogs? Today, I found out an easy way to get the latest localhost linkers!

I installed wordpress locally and was testing it using the URL http://localhost/. The incoming links section of the Wordpress dashboard showed the following blogs which are linking to localhost. Very funny!

If you check your localhost installation, you might find my blog as well! Pretty neat way to get more traffic - eh?

I don’t think any explanation is needed for the following one!

It is probably photoshopped, but too good to miss. You can check out other similar ones here.

These days, spammers are everywhere. The latest spam to hit Orkut is the “iREEADD THIS” spam. I got this message from 5 of my Orkut friends. This clearly shows how easy it is to mislead people! Here is what the mail contains,

HEY ITS DIANNA, FROM THE DIRECTOR OF ORKUT,EVERYBODY SORRY FOR THE INTERRUPTION BUT ORKUT IS CLOSING THE SYSTEM DOWN BECAUSE TOO MANY BOTTERS ARE TAKING UP ALL THE NAMES, WE ONLY HAVE 57 NAMES LEFT, IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CLOSE YOUR ACCOUNT, DONT SEND THIS MESSAGE, IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR ACCOUNT ,SEND THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST. THIS IS NOT A JOKE, YOU’LL BE SORRY IF YOU DONT SEND IT. THANKS DIRECTOR OF ORKUT, TIM BUISKI. WHOEVER DOESNT SEND THIS MESSAGE, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DEACTIVATED AND IT WILL COST YOU $ 10.00 A MONTH TO USE IT.

As you can see it looks incredibly obvious that it is a spam(Upper case, full of grammer mistakes and they have only 57 names left!). But what surprised me was that 5 of my friends forwarded it to me! Surely they don’t want their accounts to be deactivated!

Another puzzling thing is the motive of this spammer. There is no link. Hence he/she must be doing this just for the kick of it

Three friends went to a hotel. The bill was Rs 30/- Each one contributed Rs.10/-. The waiter took the bill to the cashier.

The cashier was happy & decided to give them a discount of Rs.5/- & asked the waiter to return them Rs.5/-.

Now the waiter was confused. How to distribute Rs 5 among 3 persons?

He kept Rs 2 in his pocket & gave one rupee to each one of the 3 persons.

So initially each one had contributed Rs.10. Now as they are given 1 rupee back, their contribution reduces to Rs 9.

They all contributed Rs 9 — that is 9×3=27 & 2 rupees are in the waiters pocket.

The total becomes 29. But they had paid Rs 30.

Where is the remaining 1 rupee?.

An English professor wrote the words:

“A woman without her man is nothing”,
On the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote:
“A woman, without her man, is nothing.”

All the females in the class wrote:
“A woman: without her, man is nothing.”

An old man lived alone in Minnesota. He wanted to spade his potato garden, but it was very hard work.

His only son, who would have helped him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and mentioned his situation:

Dear Son,

I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my potato garden this year. I hate to misdo the garden, because your mother always loved planting time. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If you were here, all my troubles would be over. I know you would dig the plot, for me if you weren’t in the prison.

Love,
Dad

Shortly, the old man received this telegram:

“For Heaven’s sake, Dad, don’t dig up the garden! That’s where I buried the GUNS!!”

At 4 a.m. The next morning, a dozen FBI agents and local police officers showed up and dug up the entire garden without finding any guns. Confused, the old man wrote another note to his son telling him what happened and asked him what to do next. His son’s reply was:

“Go ahead and plant your potatoes, Dad It’s the best I could do for you from here.”

So the moral of the story is that “whatever situation you are in, you may be able to help someone in need”. Now it is a completely different question why such an intelligent fellow ended up in jail

For personal tax payers, budget this year turned out to be depressing. No tax limit increase even though inflation has gone up. Yesterday I came across this funny look at tax system. In Kerala context, this can be applied to lot many things! This is apparently written by David R. Kamerschen, Professor of Economics, University of Georgia.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until on day, the owner threw them a curve.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.”Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got TEN times more than I!”
“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

I got this as an email forward. Thanks Jiny! 

1. 5 minutes ago you were traveling to office at 80 mph. in your brand new car. Now you are traveling to hospital at double the speed in an ambulance, you wish there was ‘undo (ctrl + Z)’ in life!

2. You are already late, and your key is missing, you wish there was ‘find tool (ctrl+F)’ in life!

3. You are a bankrupt, after investing in some weird business, you wish there was ‘rebuild all’ in life!

4. The train is so crowded that you cannot get anywhere near that nice girl at the other end, You wish there was ‘zoom & view full screen’ in life!

5. After marriage you realize that there is bound to be a mismatch, you wish there was an valuation period’ or at least a ’sample download’ or a ‘demo version’!

6. One day you realize that you are turning bald, you wish there was ‘cut and paste (ctrl + X)/(ctrl + C)’ in life!

And the best one is,

7. The best part of the keyboard is U & I are together which is not always there in life!

Today I came across fileswap, which allows you to upload a file and then get a file in return! It is a funny idea and I tried a few files. Most of the time I got interesting image files in return. Obviously the quality of the stuff on this network will depend on how people use it!

As you can guess, only text files, image files and pdf documents are supported. You cannot upload executables or zip files. This means most of the malicious stuff is automatically excluded. There is also a 500KB file size limit in place.

Another interesting site similar to this is the LinkSwap which allows you to swap links instead of files.  The risk with links is that it can go anywhere. Hence there is an approval system in place.

Another clone is the SketchSwap. This is the most interesting of all since it allows you to swap hand drawn images. Some of them are pretty good!