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BAN FUNDAMENTALISTIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

Disclaimer: I am not an expert who can give an expert advice. But I am the one who suffers when these terror attacks happen! All that happened in Mumbai was not an accident. It was well planed and managed attack. I pay homage to all the brave policemen, police officers and fighters who confronted the terrorists by risking their lives in the mission. No doubt Mumbai will stand up again within few days. But this time it will not only stand up the way it used to after every terror attack. This time it’s different, its attack from front directly on face. The first thing astonishes me is that how did they dare to do it? (the most useless question!) Man they have XXXX our YYYY and we are asking how? No doubt we don't have good Intelligence agency (Concluded from this incident, don’t tell what they did before), weapons, strategies to fight such attacks and many more things which common man like me don’t know. (This is nothing but crying on the situation, blaming each other!)This need to b

Two day Workshop on Machine Learning (19-20 Dce. 2008, Mumbai)

Machine Learning Machine Learning (ML) is a subfield of artificial intelligence (AI) that is concerned with the design and development of algorithms and techniques that allow computers to "learn". ML is one of the active areas of research in computer science and currently has a large repository of practically useable techniques and algorithms for a wide range of tasks. Typical ML problems include automatic clustering of a set of items, automatic classification (spam mail, documents, etc.), automatic learning/refinement of rules for a diagnostic system, predictive modelling, etc. ML methods have evolved from various domains such as Statistics, Information theory, Biology and Control theory. ML has a wide spectrum of applications including natural language processing (NLP), pattern recognition, search engines, medical diagnosis, bioinformatics and chemical informatics, fraud detection, stock market analysis, speech and handwriting recognition, robotics, intelligent computer gam

Weka -A machine learning "Aladdin ka Chirag"

If you are interested in developing applications using machine learning algorithms but you are tired of coding the Learning algorithms then here is All-in-one formula for you -WEKA.Weka is collection of machine learning algorithms. It does everything for you, you are responsible for the just data and feature extraction, keep everything else for the Weka. It really simplifies your work and saves time.It also does evaluation of the built model on the same or provided data as per your settings. You can download it form here . Here you will get documentation and all the needed information regarding using the weka. Weka provides number of ML algorithms like ANN, SMO, Decision Trees etc. So experience the Difference!

Stanford frees CS, robotics courses

Stanford University has launched a series of 10 free, online computer science (CS) and electrical engineering courses. The courses span an introduction to computer science and an introduction to artificial intelligence and robotics, among other topics. The free courses are being offered “to students and educators around the world” under the auspices of Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE). Each course comprises downloadable video lectures, handouts, assignments, exams, and transcripts. The courses are nearly identical to what’s offered to enrolled Stanford students, according to the University. However, those taking courses through SEE are not eligible to receive Stanford credit for them. Course participants do not register, and have no direct contact with Stanford instructors or professors. They do, however, have the ability to communicate online with other SEE students. A detailed SEE FAQ is available here. The University says SEE’s initial courses include “one of Stanford’s most po

Workshop on Rule Based Expert Systems @ CDAC

2 Day Workshop on Rule Based Expert Systems 17–18 October, 2008, CDAC,Navi Mumbai Expert Systems Expert systems are computer software that try to emulate human problem solving in highly specialised narrow domains such as financial investment planning, specialised medical diagnosis, equipment trouble shooting, etc. One of the few successful off shoots of Artificial Intelligence, the field received a lot of attention during the 80's. After a relatively dormant phase, expert systems are now attaining popularity as more and more applications are moving on to become intelligent systems, significantly enhancing their potential. The massive growth in hardware performance and capacity and evolution of software paradigms such as software as service is contributing to this revival. Expert systems have demonstrated their ability to perform at levels comparable to human experts in a wide range of domains. Developing an expert system consist of acquiring the specialised domain knowledge from hu

Decentralization of IT

Today Information Technology is not just a wealth creation tool for India. As we see, the contributors to it are from the diverse linguistic and geographical regions, it is flowing through the veins of nation. And that is why the more and more overseas companies are coming here. I said people from diverse background are contributing to it, but I am very sad to say IT has not reached to the geographically remote locations. As we know, IT can grow independent of the accessibility (in geographical sense), it should have reached to the at least district places. In simple language, 'the fruits of the IT have reached to the villages but not the trees of fruits'. Government is trying in that direction but many questions about the basic infrastructure are unattained. Take an example of an organization in Aurangabad, Maharashtra , two years back a software company faced a great loss just because of the unstable electricity in the region. IT don't need the abundant highways like the

MY comment on globalization...

Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (two of the Earth's greatest peacemakers) have taught us through their lives and sacrifices how to be GREAT. If any nation truly wants to be great then it should be characterized in their goals of service to other nations. It will be great when globalisation is more influenced by Gandhi and King. Here is a powerful quote to so you how much Dr. King thought of Gandhi: "Peace is the sweeter music. A cosmic melody far superior to the discords of war... Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore Gandhi at our own risk." --- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Peace and love, John Atlanta: City of Peace, Inc. Dr. King stated it well when he said: "Not everybody can be famous. But everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service." Those of you who are history s

English to Hindi Machine Translation

MaTra Translating Languages .... Revolutionizing Lives................! India is linguistically rich nation with 22 national languages recognized by the constitution of India , of which Hindi is official Union Language. Besides these there are 844 different dialects that are practiced in various parts of the country. Being a developing nation India is in great need of information revolution for the inclusive growth of the society residing in geographically different areas and speaking different languages. Internet has broken the geographical barrier but the language barrier remains unanswered as only less than 10% of population speaks English. ‘ MaTra2’ is an attempt to break the same barrier. This current version of Matra2 is a step towards the mission of Information Revolution to revolutionalize millions of lives in this nation. MaTra2 is a Fully-Automatic Indicative English-Hindi Machine Translation System. It translates the text in English into Hindi. Though the

Private schools will have to reserve 25 % seats for poor

Private schools will have to do their bit to operationalise the Fundamental Right to Education (RTE). As per a new legislation — being prepared by the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry to operationalise the six-year-old Fundamental Right — private schools will have to reserve a quarter of their seats at the entry level for children from disadvantaged sections in the neighbourhood. The government will reimburse these schools on the basis of what it spends for a student. However, schools that have received some kind of concession from the government — such as land free-of-cost or at concessional rates — will not be entitled to this reimbursement. Though a similar proposal had met with stiff resistance when it was first mooted by the National Democratic Alliance, the government has clarified that reserving a quarter of the seats in a private school for disadvantaged students from the neighbourhood is a goal that it seeks to achieve in 10 years. In the first year of opera

The 10 most important technologies you never think about

The late sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. We certainly live in a magical world. We're surrounded by technology, yet we seldom stop to consider the amazing advances that we've come to rely on every day. Whether we're surfing the Web, making a call on our mobile phones, or watching a DVD movie on our big-screen TV, we take our modern conveniences for granted. Here, then, is a peek inside the magician's hat at 10 technologies that are keys to our digital age. Without realizing it, you've probably used at least one of them already today -- if not all. But whether you're aware of them or not, without these technologies our world would be a very different place. Unicode We use computers for every kind of communication, from IM to e-mail to writing the Great American Novel. The trouble is, computers don't speak our language. They're all digital; before they can store or proc

Indian American developing infrared super computers

Washington: A computer that is a thousand-fold faster than the fastest current supercomputers is being developed by an Indian American scientist. The machine of the future being developed by Ashok Nahata of the University of Utah relies on infrared wavelengths rather than electrical wires. Nahata and his team made the equivalent of wires that carried and bent this form of infrared light, or terahertz radiation, the least exploited segment of electromagnetic spectrum. Scientists want to harness this spectrum, since vast loads of communication clog the existing spectrum. It would not only make for much faster computing but also help in designing scanners and sensors able to detect biological, chemical or other weapons. Nahata said the long-term goal is to develop capabilities to create circuits that run faster than modern-day electronic circuits "so we can have faster computers and faster data transfer via the Internet". "We have taken a first step to mak

The better question might be, what doesn't Google know about us, according to Gartner analysts.

LAS VEGAS -- Google knows almost everything connected to the Web, but there is one major source of untapped data the company has scarcely touched to date. Can you guess that area? If you cried "e-commerce transactions" you would be right, according to analysts at the Gartner Symposium ITexpo 2008 here April 10. Thanks to a powerful database management system and corresponding technologies, the company is able to access just about anything that hasn't been encrypted, said Gartner analyst Richard Hunter in his presentation on what kind of information Google corrals on the world. The one area where Google isn't particularly strong is in e-commerce transactions, where its Google Checkout platform sees only about 1 percent of what is sold on the Internet. "This is obviously an area of great interest for them because so much of their current revenue is devised of advertising," Hunter said. The conversation shed a new light on the rumor that Google could

comment on why s/w engg can't buy a benz in India..

Nice blog.And good analysis of what does prevent an Indian S/w engg from driving a benz.But I am fully in support of the two comments by devranjan & neo. India really needs inclusive growth. i don't remember the exact figures but the contribution to the GDP from Services sector is 6o%+ and that from the manufacturing & textile which needs the most of the human resource is 20%+ and farming has poor contribution less than 10%. And we all know that 60%+ population is directly agri dependent and other remaining are industry dependent and only 13% human resource is there in services industry which brings this 60%+ of the GDP. Thats dangerous for any economy(this is my personal openion ,I am not any economist).But as I understand if only two ppl in a family of 10 are bread earners and if they unfortunately die the family has no option other than being a begger.So we should try our level best to have every one included in the development. I am aware of the situation that the econo

Google hires

Google hires top talent in India to focus on Google News Rahul Roy-Chowdhury spent nearly two decades in the U.S. before joining Google as its product manager for Google News. His particular mandate is to broaden Google News’ reach in India, and his company’s sent him back to capitalize on India’s strangely voracious appetite for news. It’s one of the few countries in which newspaper circulation is actually increasing. That’s partly because rising incomes and education levels have stoked literacy, Roy-Chowdhury says, but it also has to do with the slow spread of Internet access. Of course, Google is planning for the day when every Indian can surf the Web for news, and it’s clear that when they can, they’ll still want what they like now: local news. “If you leaf through almost any newspaper here, the sequence of sections is telling,” he says. “Generally, city and state news is given pride of place, followed by some national news and generally a small amount of international coverage.” R

Wisdom from the way-out-edge - James Gosling

As the principal creator of the Java programming language, James Gosling is one of the few original hard-core IT geeks left. At 14, he broke into the computer science department at the University of Calgary in Canada and taught himself to write software; he later received a computer science degree there. The title of his PhD thesis from Carnegie Mellon University was The Algebraic Manipulation of Constraints. He has built satellite data acquisition systems, a multiprocessor version of Unix, several compilers, mail systems and window managers. As well, he has built a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text editor, a constraint-based drawing editor and a text editor called "Emacs" for Unix. Seriously geek. But, as they usually are, Mr Gosling is insightful, friendly, and highly amusing, wearing when we met the requisite technology T-shirt du jour, Galileo. He was in Australia recently for a couple of developer conferences. At 52, Mr Gosling is a researcher at Sun Microsyste

companies will look at India as their destination for offshore R&D

Though India is witnessing a slowdown in its offshore R&D activities, fewer companies will look at India as their destination for offshore R&D centers in the next 18 months.In 2005, there were 75 new offshore R&D centers in India. The number has dwindled to just 15 last year. There are about 600 MNC captives in the county where R&D offshoring activity was estimated at $6 billion and is seen as growing at 23 percent. In the total R&D market, software product development captures over 50 percent, with the balance contributed by embedded systems space. Some key reasons for this trend were cost escalation of 8 percent to 15 percent, attrition of up to 20 percent, difficulty in scalability and lack of recruitment bandwidth, says a study by Zinnov Consulting. However, the silver lining is that many of the large and established R&D centers will lend a lot of buoyancy to R&D activity from India.In fact, large companies will grow till their head count reaches 30 perc

India Has no more cost advantage

As cost of operation and managing offshore center in India has no more cost advantage. Innovation and optimization have become the buzzwords for success of India centers. The "Offshore R&D2008" which concluded in Bangalore on Friday discussed ways to imbibe a culture of innovation in the organization and strategies to achieve optimization.Naresh Chand Guptha, Senior Vice president, Print and Publishing Business Unit and MD, Adobe systems in his Key note speech shared his experience in Adobe and said that to retain best talent in the organization, it needs give up the ownership of the product to engineers who are working on it. And allow them to spend time with the development of product or IP. Intrapreneurship is the key tool to support, eulogize and reward the talents. "Being innovative is not a nationalistic character. It's shocking that still there is a perception that cheap engineers provide cheap solutions. The perception of Indian engineers are not creative
Debt waiver skewed to favour rich landholders: Sainath Tue, Mar 4 11:19 AM New Delhi, March 4 (IANS) The one-time waiver of bank debts for 'small and marginal' farmers announced in the union budget will cover only a small fraction of needy farmers and is skewed in favour of rich landholders, says Magsaysay Award winner P. Sainath . The debt waiver itself was good but would impact on only a few distressed farmers, the renowned columnist and rural affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper said Monday while delivering the third Sumitra Chisti memorial lecture on 'Death on the Farm: The Agrarian Crisis and its Consequences'. According to Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, the debt waiver will only be limited to farmers with two hectares of holding which, said Sainath , rules out 52 percent of farmers in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region. Most of the farmers in Vidarbha had an average of six hectares 'as the quality of land was

गिरीश वाघ...congrates..!

ही कार हे माझं स्वप्न होतंचं. पण ते साकार करण्यासाठी गेली चार वर्षे तरुण इंजिनिअर्सची टीम खपत होती. या कारचं श्रेय जातं ते गिरीशला आणि त्याच्या टीमला... असं रतन टाटा यांनी कारच्या लाँचिंगच्यावेळी जाहीर केले. एवढंच नव्हे तर त्यांनी मराठमोळ्या गिरीशला चक्क स्टेजवर बोलावून घेऊन त्याच्या पाठीवर कौतुकाची थाप दिली. गिरीश वाघ... टाटा मोटर्सचा एक्का म्हणूनच ते ओळखले जातात. टाटा मोटर्सच्या अधिकृत वेबसाइटमध्येही तसा खास उल्लेख आहे. इतरांसारखाच दिसणारा गिरीश अगदी साधा माणूस. फक्त वेगळ्या पद्धतीने विचार करणारा. म्हणूनच टाटा मोटर्सने आपले सगळ्यात मोठे स्वप्न पूर्ण करण्याची जबाबदारी त्याच्या हाती सोपवली. पुण्याच्या ४०० एकर भूखंडावर पसरलेल्या कंपनीच्या कारखान्यात सुमारे साडेतीन हजार इंजिनिअर काम करतात. त्यातील कार डिझाइन विभागाचे मॅनेजर गिरीश वाघ. ३४ वर्षीय गिरीश आणि त्यांच्या सहका-यांनीच लाखमोलाच्या नॅनोचे डिझाईन तयार केलंय. एक लाखाची गाडी तयार करायची पण त्यात भारतीयांसाठी जास्तीत जास्त आरामदायी सेवा द्यायच्या हे एक फार मोठे आव्हान होते. त्यामुळे पारंपरिकता सोडून , आर्थिकदृष्ट्या व्यवहारी नसलेला विच