RBI is no joker

Yesterday midnight, some friends called me and said that there is a lot of mess going on in AP around ICICI Bank, after some TV channel exaggerated the losses made by ICICI bank. All the customers were afraid and queued up before the ATMs.

Are people crazy? There is RBI, there is government. At most, what could happen is a merger with some other bank, if ICICI screws up big time. Why are people queuing up before ATMs? No bank in this world can get cash for all its customers at once. And in a small town, how much cash can be there with a bank to distribute immediately?

I don’t know how much people (including me) are aware of the real financial situation. It’s the television channels that mislead people these days. Just as everything that appears on the Internet is true, everything told by news presenter is true. It’s just a news item for television channels, but it really plays with people’s emotions. Although, the sky is falling shouts that were around for an year now is clearly evident now. That’s true for the US. I don’t say Indian banks are insulated from that, but as the RBI says, Indian banks are well regulated and people need not panic looking at the global situation.

I’m not saying that hard earned money is not precious, but people need to think a little before running to the bank in the midnight, leaving their family at home. There are more important problems that we need to focus on. Go, stay alert and avoid serious loss to life that is caused by terrorists.

నేస్తమా

చేయి విడవనన్నావు
విడచి వెళ్ళనన్నావు
వెళ్ళి మరువనన్నావు
మరచి ఇక రానన్నావు

రాకు రాకు ఇక రాకు
వచ్చినా ఇక వెళ్ళకు
వెళ్ళినా ఇక మరువకు
మరచి నన్ను చంపకు

50kmph just not enough

My new Apache RTR is kick-ass, still dint cross 50 kmph due to the run-in period. Riding at 50kmph on inner ring road is just not enough. Just done 150 odd km. Waiting for that 1000-mark to push her to the limits. (

Sa-Ro-Ja

Another from the director of Chennai-600028, Venkat Prabhu. After hearing from several people about the movie, I went to watch it with lot of expectations. I should say the director did not disappoint me.

The movie is about four ordinary city dwellers, who are by no means special. They set on a journey to Hyderabad from Chennai to watch an IPL match and meet with an unexpected situation on the way. How they react to the situation and how they come out of it is the movie.

The unexpected situation is that they run into a kidnapper gang den. The gang kidnaps a businessman’s daughter for ransom and these four folks unexpectedly run into their den and save the girl from the kidnappers. Unfortunately, all the kidnappers are suspended and dismissed policemen. A top cop forms a gang and plans to make quick buck by kidnapping his friend’s daughter and reveals it in the climax.

The director tried to highlight the imbalance created in the Indian middle class – if one reads between the lines, that is believed to have been created by the new high paying middle class jobs and run-away success entrepreneurs, mostly related to information technology. The cop who plans the kidnap says that he is very disappointed that he is at the same financial status and his friend is enjoying a higher status for ‘no reason’. And he wanted to make a quick buck by kidnapping his daughter.

Artists’ performances were good. But Jayaram was not 100 percent fit for the character. (dint watch Telugu version, so no comment on Sri Hari’s acting). Venkat Prabhu has mastered the art of gelling hilarious scenes in middle of serious situations. The climax is a little bit of mess with lot of people fighting. The last ten minutes of the movie could have been better.

It’s a mix of themes of Anjathey and Katrathu Tamil.

I give it a 3.5/5

When humans help robots…

How do you say humans and computers are different? Can computers solve all the problems that can be solved by humans? There came a beautiful test called the CAPTCHA – Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It is extensively used on the Internet as a challenge to all the robots out there trying to spam systems on the Internet. But, when humans break CAPTCHAs for not-so-good reasons, what can any technologists do?

Recently, I read an article on India’s CAPTCHA solving economy on ZD Net. There are lot of companies which are involved in CAPTCHA breaking business. They receive $2 per 1000 CAPTCHAs broken. These broken CAPTCHAs can be used by attackers to register fake accounts on sites like Yahoo!, Google, Facebook etc. And robots can also use these to comment on your blog, if you are using a CAPTCHA to prevent robots.

On one side India is receiving laurels from the international community for her success in Information Technology; on the other side these immoral (to me) businesses are appealing for people who look for a quick buck.

When humans help robots, it’s a disaster for technology.

Read the complete article on ZDNet